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LIGHT OF THE AGE 



MIBACLES EXPLAINED. 



By FRANKLIN B. ORCUTT. 



CHICAGO: 

IE* !R, I IN T E 3D rOR, THE AUTHOR, 

1866. 
4 



it '. 

PBEFACE 



My object in this work is, that people should know the 
truth. The work I have written during a visit to the 
country, and is written in haste. It may contain some 
errors for want of time to give it a due consideration; 
but the work in the main expresses my views. I do not 
rely upon thirty to fifty years experience to present an em- 
bellished popular work, but I found my work upon argu- 
ment, and by that it is to be received or rejected. Not 
believing ghost stories, witches, modern spiritualism, Ma- 
homet, Jo. Smith, the Jews, or modern Christian claims to 
mysteries, wonders, dreams, visions or revelations from the 
Almighty, I write accordingly. My quotations are brief. 
I have excluded in several instances portions of a verse, 
but only the verboseness. I have not garbled any quota- 
tion; that is, taken only a part when the remainder, if 
given, would tell against me ; but where part of a verse 
told one story and the remainder another, irrelevant to the 
subject, I have excluded the irrelevant parts, to bring to 
light the point direct, before the reader became lost in the 
superfluous language not relevant to the subject under con- 
sideration. I have had no desire to overlook the worst : 



4 PREFACE. 

the Christians' bulwark is the thing aimed at ; to fight the 
battle of light and truth from their own fortress, has been 
my object — to remove the veil that makes godliness a mys- 
tery. There are no mysteries when properly understood. 
I hope the reader will peruse this work, and profit by it 



GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 



CHAPTER I. 

"We call the attention of candid thinking men to the facts 
related in Scripture — that is, they are given us for facts — that in 
the beginning God formed the world from chaos, and created the 
universe (of which this world in proportion is not as much as a 
grain of sand), out of nothing, merely to alight the earth. Yes ! 
this universe of a hundred millions of suns, covering an area of 
the heavens so vast that light, traveling at the prodigious speed of 
two hundred thousand miles, or eight times around this globe, in a 
second of time, would require five thousand years to reach us 
from the most remote star ; and we are near the center of our 
cluster ! But this is not all. Eternal space is filled with universes 
or clusters like our Milky Way ! Lord Rosse's huge telescope 
has dissolved nebulas into universes like ours, in the eternal regions 
of space, through the awful gulf of thirty millions of years' travel 
for light to reach us. Eternity of space is evidently filled with 
suns. But discovery bewilders man ; and by analogy we suppose 
these suns or stars have their worlds revolving around them, each 
world having its vegetable and animal life, like our own. 

And the God of these dominions, we are told, came down on 
this planet, among the fig trees, in the cool of the day, hunting up 
Adam, (whom he had previously made out of dust, and upon find' 



6 

ing that he was lonesome, mutilated him of a rib, and made a 
companion.) Here he is represented as pronouncing eternal tribu- 
lation to his pair of lonely children, who were unable to withstand 
his power and obeyed the desires of the heart he gave them — 
which is as hard to understand as it would be to suppose that a 
kind father would torment eternally his two powerless infant chil- 
dren for crying, against his orders. Also, we find this Creator, on 
Mount Sinai, begging Moses, as related in Exodus xx'xii, to let him 
alone, and Moses commanding him to repent of the evil he thought. 
And when we find him represented in angelic capacity, or some 
other, using Balaam's ass for a spiritual medium, to discover angels 
that Balaam could not see, and to talk to Balaam until the scales 
fell from his eyes, it is time we begun to look into the matter, 
to see how much divinity there is about such stories. 

Again, we hear one of God's prophets (Jeremiah xx) crying 
out, that the Lord had deceived him, and had prevailed against 
him, being stronger than he ; and all through the Scriptures we 
find God represented as doing tricks, as in the case of his withering 
up Jereboam's arm, and straightening it out again, (1 Kings, xiii), 
and his performing tricks that Pharaoh's sorcerers could do ; and 
all through time he is represented as continually working miracles, 
contrary to the fixed laws of his own make, continually repenting, 
and continually angry. 

Our purpose is to explain the miracles, Noah's flood, Pentecost 
scene, Moses' wonders, and remove the veil that has clouded the 
Bible, and not leave you in mystery, to grope your way in dark- 
ness and doubting, but to explain the mysteries of the New Testa- 
ment, as well as the Old, clearly, and thus leave you free from 
superstition, with the consolation that the mystery is solved. 

Our main attention will be paid to Moses in the Old, and Christ 
in the New Testament, as they are the chief actors. First, the 
history of the Patriarchs, including all previous to Moses' day, I 
think is an admitted fact : that Moses gathered from Egypt the histo- 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 7 

ry of the creation ; of the first human parents ; of the primitive ages ; 
of the flood ; and he also learned from the Arabs, of Abraham, 
Isaac and Jacob. He also learned from the Hebrews. That 
every nation on the globe had the history of the creation and ten 
generations to the flood, although somewhat veiled, before Moses 
was cradled in the rushes, every scholar is presumed to know. 
But Moses evidently visited many parts of the country of the 
Patriarchs, as the accuracy of his geographical sketches indicate, 
and made some interesting improvements, and read this history 
to the Israelites, and called it the Book of the Covenant. This 
is the opinion of Josephus and other eminent scholars. From 
this book he taught them that the land of Canaan was promised to 
them through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and how Abraham 
left Al Habor and went to Damascus, and from thence to Canaan, 
and occupying and taking formal possession, obeying what he 
esteemed to be a divine call to raise a nation of his own, free 
from the wickedness common to the world. 

But, turning our attention to Moses and his connection with 
the children of Israel, the first we notice (as Moses' early history 
is generally understood) is, that he expressed great sorrow for his 
brethren, as is shown by his slaying an Egyptian, whom he found 
contending with one of his Hebrew brethren, and burying him in 
the sand. Pharaoh, upon hearing this, sought to kill him, and 
Moses fled to the land of Midian, in Arabia. Here for many 
years, he learned all about the country to which he afterward took 
the children of Israel. Here he conceived the plan, and was long 
doubting his success. He had no power but his own efforts, and 
he became aware that, in order to succeed, he must make Pharaoh 
believe it to be a divine call ; and Exodus hi, 1, reads, " Now Moses 
kept the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian ; 
and he led the flock to the back side of the desert, and came to 
the mountain of G-od, even to Horeb.'' The reader will remember 
that Horeb is a part of Mount Sinai, one of the lower bluffs of 



8 

that mount. Again, Exodus iv, 27, "And the Lord said unto 
Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses ; and he met him in 
the Mount of God, and kissed him." Here we learn one thing of 
importance, and that is, that Arabians and Egyptians called Horeb 
the Mount of God. Now the query is, why was this called the 
Mount of God more than any other mount ? It seems Moses left 
his flock at the back side of the desert, and came to the Mount of 
God, even to Horeb. Aaron was sent to the Mount of God, to 
meet him. "Why all this effort to go to this mount ? The secret 
is this : Sinai was a volcano, and the superstitious were taught 
that it was the Mount of God. 

Josephus, as late as his day, taught in his Dissertation to the 
Greeks, that "Hades was a subterraneous region in the earth, not 
regularly finished, where the sun does not shine ; for which reason 
it must be dark, and in one department is hell itself, where the 
wicked are driven by violence, and do not stand clear of the hot 
vapor itself." This shows us, beyond a doubt, that volcanic action 
suggested the idea of a hell in the earth ; and as the righteous were 
in another department, of course God transacted business in the 
earth. Every scholar knows that in ancient times many, if not all, 
supposed that storms were sent by God directly, and not by his 
laws, which are fixed. Hence Elias' prayer for the rain to stop 
for three and a half years. But if God changed the law of evapor- 
ation and condensation, it would have been like taking out a wheel 
of a clock, which would destroy it ; and so to destroy a law, would 
destroy the universe. But when the reader looks on our standard 
maps, and learns that that prayer was uttered in a rainless district, 
where it seldom or never rains, then his ideas are clear, and it 
becomes no longer a wonder that it did not rain sooner. But this 
was the view they took, that every phenomenon, especially a ter- 
rible one, like that of a volcanic blast, was God directly. Hence 
Sinai was the Mount of God, perhaps ages before Moses ; for the 
expression comes to us not under any explanation that it was so 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 9 

called from the fact that Moses found God there in the flaming bush, 
but he speaks as though the term was common; and Aaron was 
sent to the Mount of God, without its being named, showing that 
everybody knew it as the Mount of God before Moses found any 
God in a bush. 

Covil's Bible Lexicon — and we shall quote from him, mainly in 
this work, as he is undisputed Christian standard authority — - 
speaking of Sinai, says : " The whole country has the appearance 
of volcanic action." "We know that all mountains are the result 
of volcanic action. Consequently, his expression must mean 
of a modern geological date, showing signs of volcanic action 
within the historic period of volcanic rending. Besides, he speaks 
of the barren rugged rocks, and waves of rocks, and says plainly, 
" It looks like waves of lava that cooled in their present shape." 
This settles one point, and that is, that Sinai and its surrounding 
was not only the result of internal action, but it actually belched 
forth, like Vesuvius, covering a large portion of the country with 
waves of burning lava, as its appearance now indicates. So much 
is an established geological fact. And now, as the mount has long 
since been extinct, and no other than Moses' account left us of its 
appearance, we will notice the phenomenon as related by Moses or 
his representative (as the Pentateuch speaks of kings that reigned 
over Israel, showing that it must have been written not only after 
Moses' death, but after Joshua's, Moses' successor, and kings after 
him, Genesis xxxvi, 31.) Moses takes the children to the mount, 
and they behold the following scene : (Exodus xix) " And it 
came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were 
thunderings and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the mount, and 
the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud, so all the people in the 
camp trembled. And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, 
* * * and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a fur- 
nace, and the whole mount quaked greatly." Exodus, xx : "And 
all the people saw the thunderings and the lid ■ ■Tr : ugs and the voice 



10 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

of the trumpet and the mountain smoking." This needs no com- 
ment. A more sublime description of a volcano in full blast could 
not be written. The wise law-giver, knowing that these ignorant 
people could not be governed by law, and especially when they 
had no law except the advice of the patriarchs in the Book of the 
Covenant, lost no time in holding out to these mutinous people 
that God descended upon the mount in fire ; and the whistling, 
louder, no doubt, than the whistling of the blasts of a hundred 
furnaces combined with as many steam-engine whistles, was God's 
trump. [Here we get the trumpet story of the last day.] Here 
we learn that the smoke ascended (not descended) like the smoke 
of a furnace. Can any one suppose for a moment that God would 
descend upon that mount and roar like thunder, send out his light- 
ning, shake the mount, smoke like a blast furnace, blow his trump or 
horn, and tear himself around there for six days, all to accomplish 
nothing ? Is the reader so devoid of good sense as to believe that 
God would exercise himself in this manner to show his power to 
such an ungodly set, that but two ever saw the promised land ? 
What sport could this be for God ? The idea is too ridiculous to 
contemplate for a moment. 

Exodus xxiv, 17: "And the sight of the glory of God was 
like devouring fire on the top of Mount Sinai, in the eyes of the 
children of Israel." Of course it was. Fire looks alike to every- 
body. It looked to them just as it looked to others who named it 
the Mount of Fire or Mount of God. But, says the pious believer, 
God could have demonstrated himself just like a volcano ; it is not 
impossible ; you have not yet beat us very bad. Sure enough, 
taking the Christian view, that God found no better employment 
than to desert his dominions and sit on the top of Mount Sinai for 
Weeks and months, expressly to direct Moses and scare his band, 
as the volcano did, so they "removed and stood afar off," or, in 
other words, run, when Moses was preaching to them. But the 
question is, whether he did or not. There is quite a difference 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 11 

between a possibility and a probability ; and even if a demonstra- 
tion was necessary, is it probable that it would have been exactly 
like a volcano in every particular? If there had been any God 
about it, would there not likely have been as much as one thing 
about, it not common to a volcano ? But here God is represented 
as thundering like a volcano ; lightning, or sending out streaks of fire 
like a volcano ; blowing his trump like a volcano; the. mount 
quaked greatrf like a volcano ; he smoked like a furnace or volcano j 
he looked like a sheet of devouring fire on top of the mount, and the 
cloud covered the mount like a volcano. Here ends the descrip- 
tion of a volcano, and here ends God's demonstration with it. If 
this is a description of God, then God is a volcano, and a volcano 
is God ; for a thing that looks like a man, acts like a man, talks 
like a man, is a man. Proofs might be multiplied, but there is no 
use of wasting time on this point. One-tenth of this evidence 
would hang a criminal, and if what is here given of direct, positive 
testimony does not make this point, no point can be made contrary 
to established dogmas. 

But, turning to Moses, he goes to this mount of God, and finds 
God in a burning bush, lit by a spark from Sinai's top, if he saw 
the dead leaves burning from a dry bush at ail. The blaze on the 
mountain's top suggested the idea that God was in the blazing bush, 
or rather, that the people would believe he was. But as we have 
the story, Moses finds him in a burning bush. This is a curious 
place to find God, to make the best of it. Was God ashamed to 
show himself like a man? There is something that looks rather 
suspicious in their stories that our Creator was never found openly, 
but iii the bushes, and among the fig trees of the garden, and in 
clouds of fire and smoke. We are after an open, not a secret God, 
continually veiled in mystery. But God, out of the bush, says, 
(Exodus iii,) "I have seen the affliction of my people that are in 
Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their task-masters ; 
for I know their sorrows, and I am come down to deliver them 



12 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that 
land unto a good land flowing with milk and honey, unto the place 
of the Canaanites." Now the truth of this story is right here : 
G-od promises unconditionally, if Moses has not veiled the truth, 
that he would take that host of nearly two millions to Canaan. 
Did he do it ? Two men, Caleb and Joshua, were not the host. 
That did not fulfill God's word ; they were in no suffering in Egypt. 
That the people were rebellious, was no excuse for God's not ful- 
filling his promise. He knew that beforehand. He knew, when 
he made the promise, what they were and what they would do. 
They could not defeat the plans of the Almighty by their wick- 
edness. Would God make promises to save them, when he knew 
he could not consistently do it, for the purpose of showing those 
ignorant people his power ? "What kind of amusement would this 
be for God ? God never promised those people the land of Canaan, 
and that he would take them there, and then not do it, from any 
cause. It is blasphemy to say so. 

But after Moses has a long argument with God, telling him that 
Pharaoh would not let the people go, and Moses' cane trick that 
God showed him to exhibit to Pharaoh to convince him, Moses 
gathers the elders to assist him, and the campaign begins. All the 
natural phenomena that occur are God's judgments on Pharaoh, 
even to boils, lice and hail-storms, for his not letting the people go. 
Well, (Exodus vii,) " Moses and Aaron went in unto Pharaoh, as 
the Lord had commanded, and Aaron cast down his rod before 
Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh 
called the wise men and sorcerers. Now the magicians of Egypt 
did in like manner with their enchantments. For they cast down 
every man his rod, and they became serpents. And he hardened 
Pharaoh's heart." Is it strange that God hardened Pharaoh's 
heart, when Pharaoh saw his own men do the same trick as Aaron 
did ? But " Aaron's snake swallowed up the other snakes." This 
was a funny trick of God's, no mistake. 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL, 13 

Exodus viii: "And Aaron stretched out his hand over the 
waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of 
Egypt. And the magicians did so with their enchantments, and 
brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt." Here the magicians, 
by some kind of noise, called up frogs the same as Moses did, and 
the reason God hardens Pharaoh's heart is, that Pharaoh was too 
sharp for Moses, He calls in his wise men to explain, which 
Moses did not expect, and exposes Moses' snake trick. "What 
earthly object could God have in hardening Pharaoh's heart? It 
is not a very likely story, that God would be playing with Pha- 
raoh in this manner for the pleasure of exhibiting his power. 

Passing on, we find Aaron smiting the dust, and behold, the 
hot dry weather had bred a swarm of lice, " so there were lice on 
man and on beast." The magicians could not breed lice, sure; 
so they tell Pharaoh, "it is the finger of God" — that is, it was a 
natural event, the same as the breeding of any pestilence brought 
about by God. There was no trick about it, and they are not 
bashful to tell Pharaoh so. "What object could God have in allow- 
ing these sorcerers to counterfeit his tricks, as some later Bible 
writers say he did ? "Would they not have been more likely to 
have believed, if they were unable to do any of them ? Curious 
way, they tell us, God has of converting people, flattering them ■* 
that they can do as great wonders as himself! The fact is, Moses 
was caught, and it was only a dodge to shield him from the awk- 
ward dilemma into which Pharaoh's wise men had driven him. 
Eichenhorn remarks, that the plagues described in Exodus are 
common in Egypt, but it was their almost simultaneous appearance 
that terrified the people. H. Du Bois Ayme, one of the learned 
members of the French Expedition to Egypt, remarks : "In that 
part of Scripture treating on the epoch of the exod are found 
many facts which, although being uncommon, still are compatible 
to the records of profane authors and to the present state of the 
country." Eichenhorn de Egypti ano mirabili. Rosenmuller 
scholia in Exodum, cap. 7. 



14 

That Moses instigated the slaughter of all the first-born, and 
ordered its execution by his armies at Ramses, or Avaris, (as 
Allen Ezra thinks and as we believe,) Pharaoh's history, if it had 
been preserved, would clearly show, there is no doubt. Pharaoh 
thought the camp was getting too hot, and he had better let them 
go. When we read of the armies that destroyed the ancient cities, 
and claimed in every instance to be God's judgments, we might 
become acquainted with God's means of destroying, and refer 
this destruction to its true source, Moses' parties, and not lay the 
charge of innocent blood to God, but yield the fact that God works 
by means; and in all time the means have been men, in such cases- 
But in this case it was thought best to let the means remain a 
secret, the crime of innocent blood seemed so shocking ; all to 
accomplish, as their history proved, but the misery of the people 
for whose benefit the murder was instituted. So they stole the 
kingdom poor, under the pretense of borrowing, (Exodus xii, 36,) 
" And they spoiled the Egyptians." They then left, and Pharaoh 
pursued. Moses maneuvers in the wilderness, instead of fighting 
his way through the isthmus. He steers for the crossing, with 
something like the pole Alexander used to give signals in the 
camp, from which smoke emitted by day and fire at night, that 
the divisions of the army might not become separated. It was 
resinous fuel, that made a dense smoke by day and blaze at night. 
See Curtis Rufus, lib. 5, c. 7. Some think it was the sacred fire 
of the priests ; but this miraculous cloud was something of this 
kind, and under cover of darkness which keeps Pharaoh off, Moses 
knowing the tide, and that the wind was favorable, knew that they 
could cross during the night. But Moses, to make something of a 
demonstration, (see Exodus xiv) " stretched out his hand over the 
sea," which phrase sounds more poetical than real. It is no doubt 
an embellishment of the writer; but the verse ends, "And the 
Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that 
night, and made the sea dry land." This text shows, that by the 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 15 

wind the dry land appeared ; and if it was by the wind, it was not 
walled up, as some other Bible writers represent, who copy from 
this, and as our Sabbath school pictures show, to awe the child's 
mind with the wonderful. Bat a strong east or north-east wind 
blew back the waters, (as this was only a strait of three or four 
miles wide, being one of the prongs of the sea proper between 
Egypt and Sinai,) dry land appeared, looking, as they crossed the 
bar with the glimmering moon on the waters on either side, like a 
wall. But we will hear from Josephus on this subject ; he says : 
" As for myself, I have delivered every part of this history as I 
have found it in the sacred books. Nor let any one wonder at 
the strangeness of the narrative ; if a way were discovered to those 
men of old time, who were free from the wickedness of modern 
ages, whether it happened by the will of God, or whether it hap- 
pened of its own accord, while, for the sakes of those who accom- 
panied Alexander, King of Macedonia, the Pamphylian sea retired 
and afforded them a passage through itself, when they had no other 
way to go : I mean, when it was the will of God to destr oy the 
monarchy of the Persians." This circumstance is narrated by 
Calesthenis, Strabo, Arian and Apian. Robinson says, where the 
crossing is, it is about three or four miles from shore to shore, and 
Arabs still cross with their camels. Some historians state that 
Napoleon Bonaparte crossed there, while others state that upon his 
arriving at the shore lie found the tide setting back, and the wind 
unfavorable, and did not wait for an opportunity to cross (see Des- 
cription of Arabia). "Herodotus already knew that this sea daily 
retires and returns again." But this is evidently a critical crossing, 
and not a very public road. But Pharaoh had no time to lose, he 
must immediately follow or he would forever fail, and follow he 
did, and as the wind had blown hard, driving back the sea more 
than common, when the reaction came it came with all its fury. 
Pharaoh heard the roaring and saw the rushing waters, with un- 
common fury, surging over the bar. Being too much alarmed to 



16 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

go ahead, when nearly over, being well schooled by Moses that 
God was against him, he returns, but, alas, before the other shore 
from whence he started was reached, the surging billows were from 
eight to sixteen feet over his head, as that is the height from seve- 
ral authors and surveyors of the tide. The Red sea is connected 
with the ocean by the Mediterranean, and is in sympathy with the 
ocean tides, and being so remote from the ocean and exposed to 
the sweeping winds, the tide is very irregular. Moses takes the 
advantage of Pharaoh's misfortune to convince the ignorant slaves 
he was leading from bondage that there was a God in it, working 
subservient to him. If God had stopped the action of the tide 
there would have been a God in it, but as he did not, Pharaoh was 
drowned. This run of good luck for Moses proved favorable, for 
the 31st verse reads : "And Israel saw the great work which the 
Lord had done, * * and the people feared the Lord and be- 
lieved his servant Moses. 



CHAPTER II. 

Moses now being within ten days' journey, might have entered 
the promised land while his commissaries lasted, but he knew there 
was a gigantic race of warriors in Palestine, and that he could 
not take it with hornets, as he told the people God said he could 
(Exodus xxiii, 28), "And I will send hornets before thee, 
which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite and the Hittite 
from before thee. I will not drive them out in one year lest the 
beasts of the field multiply against thee." This is a likely story, 
that God would resort to hornets to clear the land • and further, 
before they could enter the land, within ten days' journey, beasts 
would grow up that a million of men could not contend against, 
and that God could not keep out the beasts while the Canaanites 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 17 

were marching out and the Israelites in; the hornets could stftgr 
the beasts as well as the men. So Moses stops where he is until 
the people murmur for want of food, and chastise Moses for bring- 
ing them from a land of plenty into the wilderness to starve. 

Exodus xvi : Moses conceives the idea of their going out early 
in the morning to gather a small fungi, or mushroom, a small plant 
of a spongy nature, that grows up in the night and withers in the 
sun, and is about as large as a pea, perhaps. Moses says (Exodus 
xvi, 14): "And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, 
upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as 
small as the hoar frost on the ground." This is the size of these 
miraculous loaves that Moses tells them rains down nights for 
their bread. Mr. Covil, defining manna, relates, that " Joseph us 
found manna in his day around Sinai, and that the same fact had 
also been abundantly ascertained by modern travelers." We 
hope this will settle the manna question, that its growth is common 
to that country. 

Next, we hear of these people's sufferings (17th chapter of Exo- 
dus), they are nearly choked with thirst ; water being very scarce 
in those parts, Moses conceives the idea of another miracle, as 
the people are becoming mutinous. Instead of taking the people 
to Horeb to see him smite the rock, he selects a few elders, and 
they are to report to the people that it was fairly done. Hear 
the Bible (Exodus xvii, 5, 6) : and the Lord said unto Moses-, go 
on before the people and take with thee of the elders of Israel 
and thy rod. * * Behold I will stand before thee there upon 
the rock in Horeb, and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall 
come water out of it that the people may drink. And Moses did 
so in the sight of the elders of Israel." Why did he not do it in 
the sight of the people as well as the elders ? Why did he keep 
the people nearly choked with thirst, without water, until they all 
traveled to Mount Horeb, if he could produce water where water 
was not? The answer is self-evident. Moses had been there 
2 



18 GIVE US THE TRUTH, * 

before ; he knew the wet places. It has been suggested that he 
played the canard on the elders too, by having previously stopped 
the crevice where the water gushed out, then smote the rock until 
he gave vent to the water ; but this is not probable, or he would 
have brought the people too, to witness his power ; the elders, no 
doubt, were in the secret.. 

But the greatest " sell " these people ever suffered was his lead- 
ing them out the third day to show them God. Moses knowing 
the intervals of the action of the mount, tells them beforehand 
that he would show them God on the third day. For fear the 
people would discover the plot, if they were allowed to come near 
the mount, Moses tells them that God says, Exodus xix, 12 : 
" And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, 
take heed to yourselves that ye go not up into the mount or touch 
the border of it ; whosoever toucheth the mount shall surely be 
put to death." Well, after Moses tells them this, and the third 
day arrives, just as Moses expected, the mountain opens its awful 
crater with tremendous thundering, and Moses leads them out, as 
he says, to show them their God. "And Moses brought forth 
the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at 
the nether part of the mount. And Mount Sinai was altogether 
on a smoke, because the Lord had descended upon it in fire, and 
the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace," etc. As 
I gave before, here they saw their God taking a lively turn, no 
mistake ; here they saw him puffing his smoke like a blast furnace, 
and sending out his lightning and thunderings, and blowing his 
horn tremendously. Moses goes up into the mountain, and God 
says to Moses (verse 21) : "Go down, charge the people lest they 
break through unto the Lord." Verse 23d : Moses informs God, 
saying: "The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for thou 
chargest us, saying, set bounds about the mount." It seems that 
God had either forgotten what he told Moses about setting the 
bounds, or else he did not know that Moses had obeyed. But God 



THOUGH THE HEAYENS FALL. 19 

being anxious to know that no one was near the mount, says to 
Moses (verse 24) : " Get thee down, and thou shalt come up, thou 
and Aaron, but let not the priests and the people break through to 
come up, lest he (God) break through upon them." It would seem 
that God was extremely desirous that no one should come up on 
the mount but Moses and Aaron, but I do not learn that Moses 
even took up Aaron. But Moses goes down (see Exodus xx) and 
begins to preach to the people what God had told him. He tells 
them the creation story, gives them the commandments verbally, 
and is just telling them " not to covet thy neighbor's wife ;" verses 
17, 18 : "And all the people saw the thunderings and the light- 
nings, and the voice of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, 
and when the people saw it they removed and stood afar off." 
Or, in other words, the people get alarmed and run, right in the 
midst of Moses' sermon ; and the people said unto Moses : " Let 
not God speak with us lest we die." They were so terribly 
alarmed. " And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near 
unto the thick darkness where God was, and the Lord said unto 
Moses, thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Ye have 
seen that I have talked with you from heaven." Curious heaven, 
certainly, in a cloud of ashes on Sinai. But Moses gets from this 
heaven another long message and delivers it verbally ; the reader 
will find it in Exodus xxi, xxii, xxiii. 

Again we find (Exodus xxiv, 2) "And Moses alone shall come 
near the Lord." So Moses goes alone again and is gone forty 
days. It took him some time to write out, in a rude manner, his 
long legal document. Of course the story is familiar with every 
one, that the people thought him dead, and with their stolen jew- 
elry made a calf, the nearest representative of their intellect. 
Finally, Moses comes down, and in rage breaks the tables of the 
law upon learning that they had made a calf; and then tells them 
that God told him the whole affair, and what he said to God to 
appease his wrath. Now, if God did tell Moses that they had 



20 GIVE US THE TKUTH, 

corrupted themselves and made a calf, would he have waited until 
he came down from the mountain before he smashed the tables of 
stone ? The dialogue between God and Moses is this (Exodus 
xxxii): "And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, 
and behold it is a stiff-necked people. Now, therefore, let me 
alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may 
consume them, and I will make of thee a great nation." This is 
what God said, making a great I again of Moses. Now, this is 
what Moses said, by way of argument, to God, commencing at 
verse 11: "Why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, 
which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with 
great power and a mighty hand? "Wherefore should the Egyptians 
say, for mischief did he bring them out to slay them in the moun- 
tains and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from 
thy fierce wrath and repent of this evil against thy people. Re- 
member Abraham, Isaac and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou 
swearest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply 
your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land will I give unto 
your seed, and they shall inherit it forever. And the Lord re- 
pented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people." This 
is the dialogue. If Moses' word is true, God begs Moses to let 
him alone. If his word is true, God listens to the order of Moses 
to turn from his fierce wrath, and to the harangue that he had a 
host of witnesses that would say he done it for mischief if he 
brought them out of Egypt to destroy them. If Moses tells the 
truth, God listened to hear Moses remind him of his promise, as 
though there was danger of God's forgetting it. If Moses' word 
is true, God intended evil and needed to repent. If Moses tells 
the truth, he ordered God to repent, and God, after hearing his 
argument, did repent. Can it be possible that any man can believe 
God ever acted the part of such an ignoramus as this, inferior to 
Moses, and swayed by his argument ? God never sat in Moses' 
heaven, on top of Mount Sinai in a cloud of smoke, or out of it, 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 21 

and listened to such a harangue of blasphemy as this from any 
man, to accomplish any purpose. The Christian dodge is, that God 
acted to the capacity of men in those days of ignorance, talking to 
Moses in nearly every line of his writings for forty years. Does 
Moses appear to be so much inferior to us as to require this spe- 
cialty more than we ? 

But to the subject. Moses orders the slaughter of three thou- 
sand of the leaders in the calf worship that did not believe God 
was on the mountain. Then Moses is called upon the mount, 
alone again, of course, to get another set of tables of law, but 
this time Moses has to hew his own tables, God would do no more 
than to write them. But Moses is charged, (Exodus xxxiv, 3,) 
" And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be 
seen throughout all the mount." And to give it a good color that 
the mount would be defiled if anything touched it, Moses tells 
them that God ordered him to not let the herds eat before the 
mount, as though a few cows or camels would disturb God. This 
looks like suspicious play from beginning to end ; no evidence 
but Moses' word for anything, and many of the people were wa- 
vering and were worshiping strange gods, and needed more evi- 
dence of divinity, but the moment the people saw as Moses saw 
there was no evidence; hence Moses kept them in profound igno- 
rance, governing them by miracle, as far as his word and strata- 
gem could induce a belief; further than, that he took his chances. 

We learn (Exodus xviii) that the priest of Midian, Moses' 
father-in-law, learned him how to govern them by putting rulers 
over tens, fifties and hundreds, instead of sitting himself from 
morning until night, and Moses adopted it. So it seems that really 
one of the most important things God, who was continually with 
Moses, neglected to instruct him, and the priest did not advise with, 
neither did Moses, refer the matter to God. No, reader, I have no 
doubt but you understand that whatever Moses thought the people 
ought to do, or whatever he wished to accomplish, he considered it 



22 

the Divine will, and instructed the people accordingly, whether in 
war or in peace. Moses varied his stories to pass or satisfy the peo- 
ple ; after telling them that G-od would clear the land of Canaan 
with hornets, (which were quite a pest in that country,) we find 
him again (Exodus xxxiii) telling the people an angel would drive 
out the Canaanites ; so he held out to them the best he could that 
there was hope, notwithstanding his people feared, and would 
not fight the Anakims. Moses hoped to raise a young generation 
free from superstitious stories of the ancient giants and warriors in 
Canaan, and that he would be able to take it. Moses himself was 
a bloodthirsty warrior, as far as accomplishing his purposes, if no 
farther. Numbers xxxi : we learn that Moses' army took about 
thirty-two thousand prisoners, men, women and children. Verses 
17, 18, hear Moses: "Now, therefore, kill every male among the 
little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man, but all 
the women children that have not known man keep alive for your- 
selves." Here is an order for the wholesale murder of innocent 
women and children, that never done him harm, which is but a 
repetition of the murder of the first born of Egypt. The true 
character of this man's deeds, tearing infant children from their 
mothers' arms and spilling innocent blood, only to be followed 
by murdering women that never done him harm, would make the 
blood run cold in the heart of a tyrant. 



CHAPTER III. 

Numbers xi : we read of a wind from the Lord that blew upon 
the land a swarm of quails. We know that quails are plenty, or 
were of a modern date, in that country, but that they were two 
cubits, or several feet, high, upon the face of the earth, we will lay 
that story alongside of the story of Moses, in the 22nd chapter, 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 23 

concerning the revelation Balaam's ass gave him about the angel, 
and leave the reader to believe or doubt it, just as he chooses, and 
turn back to the 16th chapter of Numbers, for the purpose of 
showing the volcanic state of the country there at that time. 
Here we find a case of the ground's opening and swallowing up 
all the men, houses and goods pertaining to Korah. " And there 
came out fire of the Lord and consumed two hundred and fifty 
men that offered incense." Here is a simple narrative of a terri- 
ble shock and opening of the earth, as in Mexico, in 1759, when 
the earth opened and swallowed up two rivers, Cuitembro and San 
Pedro ; six mountains surged up from the gaping gulf, among 
which is the volcanic mountain Jorullo, 2,150 feet above the an- 
cient plain ; but of course Moses knew all about it beforehand, 
that the earth would swallow Korah, as he did the calf story, and 
it was sent for their wickedness. On such foundation as this is 
the Old Testament built. 

I have heard men, when driven to the last extremity, endeavor 
to prove the divinity of Moses' writings by the sentiment of the 
ten commandments, as though they were superhuman. Although 
they are good, they bear evidence of being the result of human 
experience, and were lived by in the days of the Patriarchs, many 
hundreds of years before Moses. The reader will compare the ten 
commandments of Moses (Exodus xx) with the following (Genesis 
xv, 7) : "lam the Lord that brought thee out of Ur to the land 
of the Chaldees." Second (Genesis xxxv, 2): "Jacob said, put 
away the strange gods that are among you." (4th verse) : " And 
they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods." Fourth command : 
"Remember the Sabbath day and keep it- holy." Could only be 
remembered as having previously existed ; the definite article the 
points to a particular day previously observed." Sixth command : 
"And Reuben said unto them, shed not blood." The seventh 
command, that "Thou shalt not commit adultery," is taught 
(Genesis xxxiv) in the case of Shechem and Jacob's daughter. 



24 GIVE US THE TKUTH, 

Theft was always a crime. The ninth command, that they should 
not bear false witness, was observed between Jacob and Laban, 
for seven years' labor for a wife. Promises were most scrupu- 
lously observed. The experience of the first Patriarch of an 
ordinary family ought to teach him all the divinity there is in 
these commands. It is astonishing how foolish men can talk. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Passing to Joshua, Moses' successor, we will notice his miracle, 
that was done on the day that he fought the five Amorite kings. 
"When, in the heat of battle, minutes seemed like hours to anxious 
Joshua, he no doubt thought the sun had stood still, but the writer 
of Joshua's history, whoever he is, gets his account of this miracle 
from the book of Jasher. Joshua x, 12, 13, the writer says : 
" And he (Joshua) said, in the sight, of Israel, sun, stand thou still 
upon Gibeon, and thou, moon, in the valley of Aijalon. And the 
sun stood still, and the moon stayed until the people had avenged 
themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of 
Jasher ? So the sun stood still in the midst of the heavens about a 
whole day." Now we have learned from this writer the sun was 
in the midst of the heavens, on Mount Gibeon. That is a new 
location for Mount Gibeon ; but what is of the most importance, 
he gets this Bible that we have got as revelation, from the writ- 
ings of Jasher. Who is Jasher, more than any other historian, 
recording events and giving theories and relating stories, true or 
false, as he finds them ? Covil, defining Jasher, says, about his 
book: ''In all probability it was a collection, formed by degrees, 
of poems in praise of the theocratic heroes." In the 1st chapter 
of 2nd Samuel is an elegy of David over Saul and Jonathan, 
and the 19th and 20th verses are noted texts for preachers, and 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 25 

they are beautiful ; hardly a preacher but what has given us a sub- 
lime sermon from this quotation of the profane historian Jasher, 
a poetical writer upon the beauties of great deeds of heroes. 
Theorizing and enlarging is a poet's license, and from such sources 
it appears came these miraculous stories. We learn from this how 
the Bible starts. A writer sits down and gathers up his scraps; 
among them are historians and poets like Jasher ; he selects such 
as he wants from all that suit his ideas. If he find Jasher dwell- 
ing, in his poetical lines, on the beauties of miracles, that suits 
him, he takes it, and so on among the others, and when done it is 
translated several times, with alterations at each turn, and then 
voted on ; and all that has gathered from these scraps, a story that 
corresponds with the doctrines and theories of the delegation, 
they vote it the word of G-od ; and the book of Job, if one man 
had voted the other way it would have been a profane history, 
but now it is the true word of God. This is about the way our 
Bible is made up. Think of the idea of the writings of the poet 
Jasher given us for revelation. 

Returning to the story, Jasher said the sun stood still ; that we 
all admit. If Jasher had said the sun started, that would have 
been the miracle, but that the world stopped its revolution no one 
affirms. Bub the language is such as to imply the sun started after 
standing a day ; if it did, then that was the miracle, not in its 
standing, but in its starting. Passing along, there is nothing par- 
ticularly interesting, the same high-handed absurdity is kept up, 
from necessity, to govern these unruly people, that had to be gov- 
erned by miracles for want of law or power to execute, until the 
book of Ruth, which is a simple love story ; how she got in bed 
with Boaz. Then commences the reign of kings, and the age in 
which prophesying is in a high state of cultivation. 



26 GIVE US THE TKUTH, 



CHAPTER V. 

"We will' now turn our attention to the patriarchs, a portion of 
history attributed to Moses, but written by a writer who mentions 
the reign of kings that reigned over Israel (see Genesis xxxvi, 31). 
The story that we have got could not have been written less than 
five to eight hundred years after Moses was dead ; but we will 
look at the history as we find it, no matter whether the writer was 
another poet like Jasher or some one else, our purpose is to learn 
whether the story bears evidence of a daily chat with God, or 
whether that part was their imagination in an ignorant age. 

It seems the Bible writer was of a different genius than Jose- 
phus, as each give a different account, of the same character. Jo- 
sephus, although giving credit to miracles, speaking of Abraham, 
gives us a straight -forward, sensible account of him. Josephus, 
(vol 1, p. 49,) speaking of Abraham, says: "He was a person of 
great sagacity, both for persuading his hearers and not mistaken in 
his opinions, * * and he determined to renew and to change 
the opinion all men happened then to have concerning God, for 
he was the first that dared to publish this notion, that there was 
but one God, the creator of the universe ; * * thus his opin- 
ion was derived from the irregular phenomena that were visible 
both at land and sea." This looks like sense, that Abraham came 
to his conclusions from argument, instead of a continued chat with 
God, as Moses' writer represents. If Abraham was the first man 
that found out there was but one God, and that by astronomy, is it 
likely that God ever revealed himself to man during the nineteen 
hundred years previous to Abraham ? Is it likely that God ever 
revealed himself to Abraham and not inform him as to the num- 
ber of gods, but leave him to figure it out by astronomy? If God 
did not reveal himself to Abraham, as the Bible writer in nearly 
every line says, have we any evidence that God did to any of 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 27 

them ? Joseplius is quoted by all Christians, and they know that 
he had the sacred writings and other books, and is said by Joseph 
Sculiger to be the "greatest lover of truth of any writer, Greek 
or Latin, that ever lived, and more safe to believe him." Jose- 
phus tells us what Berosus says of Abraham. He tells us Heca- 
teus wrote a book of Abraham, showing that Josephus had at hand 
the best authors, that are certainly as reliable as the poet Jasher, 
that the Bible writers quote from; which story shall we believe? 
Shall we believe a sensible story that agrees with the experience of 
the world for the last 1800 years, or believe God was his daily com- 
panion, as the Bible writer says ? But, to decide this matter, we will 
look at the character Jacob. First (Genesis xxvii), Jacob steals his 
father's blessing from Esau by putting on hairy mittens and going 
to the old man, who was blind and lay sick, telling him that he 
was Esau, and, to prove it, reached the poor old dying man his 
hands for him to feel ; the old man says, Art thou my very son 
Esau ? Jacob says, I am, and gets the blessing from Esau, who is 
after game for his father, and is to be blest when he returns. 
Genesis xxix : Jacob tends cattle for his uncle Laban fourteen 
years, and buys two wives, named Leah and "Rachel ; he then 
tends cattle, and is to have those that are marked spotted, speckled 
or striped, according to their several and different agreements, so 
he put spotted, speckled and striped sticks in the watering place 
where the cattle drank when they conceived, until all the cattle 
except the poor, that he did not want their increase, fell to him ; 
he then took away the sticks, that the increase of the poor cattle 
might fall to Laban. So he kept on gaining possession of all the 
good cattle, and Laban looked sorrowful and his sons mourned. 
Then Jacob ran away with them all. * The Bible words are (Gene- 
sis xxxi, 20): "And Jacob stole away." Then Jacob, instead 
of telling his wives how he managed the affair to get all the cattle in 
his possession, lays this robbery to God. After telling them that 
" when he was to have the speckled, then they bear all speckled ; 



28 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

when his wages was to have the ring-streaked, then they bear ring- 
streaked ; thus hath God taken away the cattle." This is what he 
told his wives, in the 31st chapter, while the 30th chapter, com- 
mencing at the 38th verse, tells us how he accomplished it by his 
rods in the water where they drank. But this is not all. In the 
meantime, God is in his domestic affairs. God is represented as 
assuming the whole domestic concern ; when the wives are barren, 
God gives Jacob their handmaids. But the neatest thing about 
this is that Rachael begs for children, and Jacob raves around in 
a terrible rage. (Genesis xxx, 2) : " And Jacob's anger was kin- 
dled against Rachael, and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath 
withheld the fruit of the womb ?" Sure enough, who had, for after 
she gave him her handmaid, she (Rachael) raised a son, and called his 
name Joseph (see 23rd and 24th verses) ; and after he declares 
Leah barren she hires him with mandrakes, and raises her fifth son 
(see Genesis xxx). This is what the Bible declares of this man of 
God, that all Christians pray to sit with at the right hand of God ; 
as for me, I had rather be farther off, if I had any cattle or 
daughters with me, especially. It seems strange that we have got 
to argue that such men are not men of God, no matter who or 
what book says so ; their votes, did not make the Bible any more 
sacred than before they voted ; then it was no more than a book of 
heroes, pretending, and no doubt but what they believed it, that 
God talked with man, telling him the result of listening to snakes' 
clamor that was trying to get his children from him. There is 
no use talking such stuff, God was never the antagonist of a snake 
or a louse, and it is blasphemy to say so ; he never suffered his 
offspring to be deceived by a snake, an animal of his own cre- 
ating, any more than he cast a giant into a mountain, and every 
time the giant turned over he belched forth fire and smoke; neither 
does he employ angels to ferry souls over hell because some an- 
cient print says so. Open your eyes and look at things, not give 
credence to all ancient mythology, that teaches you absurdity and 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 29 

ignorance, whether in the Bible or out of it. "When you find such 
yarns as that God placed a rainbow in the heavens for a sign that 
he would no more drown the world, when, by the laws of refrac- 
tion and reflection, that existed before the world was. There must 
have been a bow ever since rain fell and the sun shone. When 
you read of the sun turning back ten degrees, in Ahaz' or any 
other man's dial, or the world's stopping its revolution to accom- 
modate Joshua, or any other man, to fight battles and kill more 
men. And when you read of God's repenting, as he did, that he 
made man, and in the case of Ninevah, and after hearing Moses' 
speech in defense of his brethren, and many other cases, when you 
read these things, remember that it is not theology, but mythology. 
For truth, look ahead ; why turn to the dark, superstitious ages 
where theories came from the ignorant, in the dim background of 
time, where all was miracle, miracle, miracle ? 



CHAPTER VI. 



We will now show how men prophesied, as the fulfillment of 
the predictions is the Christians' great bulwark. To illustrate, we 
will commence at a modern date and work back. Christ foretold 
the destruction of Jerusalem. Abraham Lincoln predicted the over- 
throw of American slavery, in 1848, when he said, " A house 
divided against itself cannot stand ; this country cannot endure 
half slave and half free." So did Jackson and Harrison predict 
the same. Jo Smith said there would "be war between the North 
and the South, and it would commence in South Carolina." The 
fulfillment of these prophesies depends on the ability of the prophet 
to judge the future by the past, and judging from the present tide 
of circumstances. 

But there is another mode from which more trouble or mystery 



30 

has arisen. It is this : a man predicts arid another fulfills, thereby 
proving that his ancestors were favored with communion from 
God, and if their ancestors were, it would not seem strange to the 
people that they were too, that being the height of their ambition, a 
prophet of God; for example (1 Kings ii, 27), "So Solomon 
thrust out Abiathar from being priest unto the Lord, that he (Sol- 
omon, not God,) might fulfill the word of the Lord which he 
spake concerning the house of Eli, in Shiloh." This is the way 
men run the prophetic machine, one man to predict, another man 
to execute, and no God about it whatever. This game has ex- 
tended over hundreds of years sometimes. 

Rev. John Fletcher wrote a dissertation to substantiate the di- 
vine authority of the Scriptures ; that is introduced in our large 
Bibles as a sort of prop. And I will try to sift his great miracle 
that he says converted the Earl of Rochester — a man who, no 
doubt, knew more of politics than bible. It appears that Jerobo- 
am, to prevent the children of Israel from going up to Jerusalem 
to worship, fearing they would follow Rehoboam, king of Judah, 
who had a branch of the children of Israel and was of the house 
of David, set up some golden calves for worship, on an altar at 
Bethel.* Very naturally, then, a man of God comes down from 
the tribe of Judah and cries against the altar (1 Kings xiii, 2) ; 
" And he cried against the altar in the word of the Lord, and 
said, 0, altar, altar, thus saith the Lord, behold a child shall be born 
unto the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon thee shall be 
offered the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, 
and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee." This is the predic- 
tion, simply a threat and boast what Judah's tribe of the regular 
order from David would accomplish. It appears, after an elapse 
of three hundred years, a child is born unto the house of David 
that they name Josiah. If there is anything strange about it so 
far, it is that three hundred years elapsed before the name Josiah 

* Jacob originally built this altar. (See Genesis xxxv.) 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 31 

occurred in the family, it being a very common name, and it being 
so long he could not fulfill the threat of burning the priests on the 
altar, for they must have been all dead. But Josiah gets the law 
from the priests and submits it to Huldah, the prophetess, to know 
whether it is true or not (see 2 Kings xxii, 14) ; then he calls a 
council of the priests and the slaughter of property begins (see 
2 Kings xxiii). " He break down the houses of the Sodomites." 
" The altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, 
which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manas- 
seh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, did he 
beat down and break them down from thence, and cast them into 
the brook Kidron. And the high places * * which Solomon 
built, * * did the king defile." Well, it seems he is destroy- 
ing everything among his own tribe, believing Huldah, that the 
people had gone astray. But next he comes to the altar at Bethel 
that the miracle is figured from (vs. 15, 16), "Moreover, the 
altar that was at Bethel * * he break down, * * and sent 
and took the bones out of the sepulchres and burnt them upon the 
altar and polluted it, according to the word of the Lord, which the 
man of God proclaimed." There is the miracle. He burnt the 
bones on the altar, according to the word of the Lord. "We 
believe he did, and if the priests had been alive he would have 
burnt them according to the word of the Lord too. Is it a mira- 
cle for a man to carry out the programme he has right before his 
eyes, given him by his ancestors ? All of this destruction of his 
was to fulfill Moses' law, which the reader will see by reading the 
first four verses of the 23rd chapter of 2 Kings. There is not a 
shadow of a miracle here, and it is Fletcher's great bulwark. It 
is nothing strange that Josiah should destroy a host of altars ; others 
destroyed altars ; Josiah is trying to do G-od service. This writer 
of Kings says, "Josiah turned to the Lord with all his heart,"- 
speaking of these destructions, and Josiah represents G-od's heart 
in the following manner (23rd chapter, 26th verse) : "The Lord 



32 GIVE US THE TKUTH, 

turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath wherewith his 
anger was kindled against Judab, because of all the provocations 
that Manasseh had provoked him withal." This is a pretty de- 
scription of God's character ; men that know no more about God 
than this, to suppose him provoked and raging mad, set before us 
now as our teachers about God. It is the height of presumption. 
If God was such an excitable character he would have swept us 
from the earth thousands of times. They judged God's disposition 
by man's ; their whole story proves that they did ; and knew no 
more about God than the ant that crawls upon the ground, except 
his works in the heavens. 1 Kings xiii : This man of God that 
proclaimed against the altar represents God as doing more 
tricks; verse 4, he says, "And it came to pass, when king Jero- 
boam heard the sayings of the man of God which had cried 
against the altar in Bethel, that he put forth his hand from the 
altar, saying, Lay hold on him. And his hand which he put forth 
was dried up, so he could not pull it in again." Well, this is an- 
other of God's funny tricks ; we might have believed it, but it was 
a little too funny, he straightened it right out again. Verse 6 : 
"And the man of God besought the Lord and the king's hand 
was restored him again." This sounds a little too much like 
boys' play to suit me. It seems, also, that an old prophet at 
Bethel — nothing before was ever brought against him — invited 
this man of God to eat with him, but the man of God declines, 
saying, God forbid him eating in the place, but the prophet says 
(verse 18), "I am a prophet also, as thou art, and an angel spake 
unto me by the word of the Lord, saying, bring him back into the 
house, that he might eat bread and drink water ;" but the writer, 
knowing that when he had eaten and went away he met a lion and 
the lion killed him, and supposing God sent the lion to kill him 
for eating in Bethel, finishes the verse by saying, " But the prophet 
lied unto him." This shows the pivot on which prophets stood, 
to be handed to us whether they were lying prophets or true 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 33 

prophets. It shows that all that claimed to be prophets were proph- 
ets, either true or false, but as no one claims God is in a false prophet, 
it shows that if a prophet does not get caught, as this Bethel 
prophet did by the lion accident, he is a true prophet, and we 
must believe his extravagant hornet stories as the true word of 
God. But some of these prophets have played sharp ; for instance, 
Isaiah tells Hezekiah when he is sick that God says he is going 
to die (2 Kings xx), but some days after, when Hezekiah begins 
to get well, in spite of Isaiah's prediction, Isaiah tells him God 
heard his prayer and would lengthen his days fifteen years, and, 
for a sign, he caused the shadow to turn back ten degrees in Ahaz' 
dial. Here is a fair, plain, unconditional declaration of God, if Isaiah 
tells the truth, that Hezekiah should die, and Hezekiah did not 
die. Hezekiah's praying does not fulfill God's promise ; if you tell 
a man you will kill a certain animal, it does not fulfill your word 
if you do not kill it because the animal moans ; the animal will 
always do that, and it is known beforehand ; but Hezekiah was 
already a praying man. 2 Kings xviii, 30: the Assyrian king 
said, " Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord." This 
shows what kind of mettle Hezekiah was. The truth is, Isaiah 
was caught in his prediction, and the quicker it can be shown he 
returned to Hezekiah after making the prediction and predicting 
his recovery, the quicker it shows he discovered his mistake ; and 
as for the world turning back ten degrees, it needs no comment ; 
the idea of this globe, rolling at the rate of over a thousand miles 
per hour, not only stopped but rolled back ten degrees, then went 
ahead again at its usual rate, and all this done to accomplish noth- 
ing — it shows how ignorant and presumptuous those men were. 
But the greatest miracle I see is, that men can be so ignorant at 
this age of the world as to ask us to believe such men knew any- 
thing about God. 

But, passing along through time, we find some of the " holy 
men of God " in a terrible fix. If it was some of the false prophets 



34 

that were not shrewd enough to carry their play through, it would 
be of less consequence, but it is Jeremiah (see Jeremiah xx, 7). 
Hear him : " 0, Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I am deceived ; 
thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed. I am in derision 
daily ; every one mocketh me." "Well, sure enough, the Almighty 
is too much for him ; Jeremiah is in trouble, and it arose from his 
telling the people many wondrous works God would do, and God 
deceived him, God was too strong for him. Jeremiah was the 
first true prophet but what had been able to conquer God, either 
by force, argument or prayer. These men certainly describe a 
different God from what we have any knowledge of now. Their 
God Moses uses the force of his authority and commands him to 
repent, he also argues with him, he informs him that bounds were 
set around the mount ; Hezekiah prays to God and God changes 
his mind ; this God repented that he had made man ; he was a 
little stronger than Jeremiah and deceived him ; but Jonah being 
better acquainted with their God, says (4th chapter, 2nd verse) : 
" Was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? There- 
fore I fled before unto Tarshish, for I knew that thou art a gra- 
cious God, * * and repentest thee of the evil." This is plain 
talk ; Jonah knew he would repent of the evil. Here Jonah 
judges God and pronounces it an evil he threatened to do, and 
says he knew God's business, that he would repent, and that's 
why he went to Tarshish. Now, this is not a description of the 
God Ave have. Jonah's God was this : in the first chapter, the 
word of the Lord came unto him, that is, a message from his su- 
perior, to threaten Nineveh; and the way God destroyed ancient 
cities was the same as now, by large armies, except volcanic ac- 
tion — that we are exposed to at all times; and Jonah knew by 
the political state of affairs that God would not destroy Nineveh, 
so he fled to Tarshish, and was shipwrecked or thrown overboard, 
and not being far from land, as the account shows, and the storm 
ceased, he swam or drifted ashore, what we call, in common speak- 



THOUGH THE HEAVEN'S FALL. 35 

ing, a miraculous escape, no doubt, and he makes a good joke of it 
about the fish swallowing him. Leave off the gourd and fish story 
and it becomes a reasonable piece of history, and not a novel 
story, as many suppose. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Let us now briefly notice the wonders of Daniel. We will 
turn to the book of Daniel and learn who he is and what he has 
done. First chapter, 3rd, 4 th and 6th verses: "The king (Nebu- 
chadnezzar) spake unto Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, that 
he should brino- certain of the children of Israel, and of the kind's 
seed, and of the princes, children in whom was no blemish, but 
well favored, and skillful in all wisdom, cunning in knowledge and 
understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in 
the king's palace. * * * Now among these were of the 
children of Judah : Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah." 
17th verse : "As for these four children God gave them knowledge 
and skill in all learning and wisdom, and Daniel had understand- 
ing in all visions and dreams." Now, reader, I want to call your 
attention to the fact that he was skilled in dreams, he studied them 
his three years while being tutored by Nebuchadnezzar ; we have 
found the secret of Daniel's knowledge of dreams, he was skilled 
in them as a profession. Their symbols were many ; lion repre- 
sented courage ; ram, a fighting nature ; kid, harmlessness ; iron, 
strength ; gold, purity ; clay, brittleness, and so on to almost in- 
finity. So, if a man had a dream and told it, Daniel and all the 
wise men and astrologers of the land could interpret it by rule, the 
same as old ladies will all tell the same stoiy from the same cup. 
Now bear in mind, reader, our motto, we are not hunting miracles, 
but are endeavoring to explain without the necessity of acknowl- 
edging one. 



36 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

In the second chapter, it seems Nebuchadnezzar has a dream, 
and calls his astrologers, but they say (see 4th verse) : "0 king, 
live for ever ; tell thy servants the dream and we will show the 
interpretation. The king answered, the thing is gone from me, if 
ye will not make known unto me the dream and interpretation 
thereof, ye shall be cut in pieces." (See 10th verse) : " The Chal- 
deans answered before the king and said, There is not a man upon 
the earth that can show the king's matter." This shows us that 
they interpreted by rule ; they did not claim any power to divine, 
but to interpret. But verses 11 to 16 say, "And there is none 
other that can show it before the king except the gods, whose 
dwelling is not with flesh. For this cause the king was angry, * 

* and the decree went forth that the wise men should be slain, 
and they sought Daniel and his fellows to be slain." Daniel says 
to the king's captain, "Why is the decree of the king so hasty? 
Then Daniel went in and desired the king that he would give him 
time and that he would show the king the dream and the inter- 
pretation." How was Daniel so sure he would show the dream if 
he depended on more than his own abilities? God deceived Jere- 
miah, and if he had not, Daniel could not tell for a certainty what 
God would do in this matter. God's ideas might have been differ- 
ent from Daniel's, but Daniel says he (not God) will show the 
dream. Verse 17 says: "Then Daniel went to his house and 
made the thing known to Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, his 
companions." Here, reader, is the story so far. 1st. You have 
learned that Daniel is skilled in dreams. 2nd. That the king 
has forgotten the dream; he tells the astrologers so twice (verses 
5 and 8). 3rd. You have learned that the captain told Daniel 
the story, and of course the whole story. 4th. Daniel is to be 
killed unless he makes known the dream. 5th. Daniel says posi- 
tively he will make known the dream, give him time. 6th. He 
went directly to his companions, of course, to help him seek the 
thing out during the night. Here is our case, the young, ambi- 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 37 

tious Daniel doomed to be cut in pieces or divine the dream, and 
lie knows the king had forgotten the dream, and Daniel is skilled 
in dreams. Daniel felt that self-protection was the first law of 
nature, that he was bound to obey. A man would be a very un- 
natural brute to suffer himself and his comrades, and all the wise 
men of the land, to be hewn in pieces by the rising of the next sun 
rather than deceive the man that issued the inhuman order. It 
would seem that a man that would not protect himself and com- 
rades under such circumstances wanted to die; he certainly would 
have more restraint of conscience than Abraham had, when he told 
the king that his wife was his sister, and his life was not at stake 
either. There is no use of talking, of course Daniel would do the 
best he could for his life, and did. The next morning he goes 
before the king, who had forgotten his dream, and says : " Then 
was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision." Of course 
it had to be revealed. Yerse 27 : " The secret that the king has 
demanded, the wise men, the astrologers cannot show unto thee, 
but there is a G-od in heaven that revealeth secrets." Daniel says 
(verse 30) : "This secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom 
that I have, * * * but that thou mightest know the thoughts 
of thy heart." Now what could Daniel, under the circumstances, 
care about that king's heart, any farther than his own interests 
were concerned, with the decree over his head, reveal or you shall 
be cut in pieces? But Daniel tells him a splendid dream; it 
would seem very much like a miracle that a man should happen 
to dream such a beautiful story, hear it : " Thou, king, sawest 
and behold a great image : this great image, whose brightness was 
excellent, stood before thee, and the form was terrible. This im- 
age's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his 
belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron 
and part of clay." This pleased the king ; it was a pretty image, 
no mistake, but Daniel hitches a little more on to this image so as 
to give him a chance to tell the king (what several prophets had 



38 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

said before in different words,) that " God should set up a king- 
dom which shall never be destroyed, and that it should break in 
pieces and consume all these kingdoms;" and that God hath 
made it known to the king, being anxious to flatter him, 
(as the result shows that he was made ruler of Babylon for 
it, and Daniel was not reluctant to accept the office.) What he 
hitches on to the image is this : " Then was the iron, the clay, the 
brass, the silver and the gold broken to pieces together, and be- 
came like the chaff of a summer's threshing floor, and the wind 
carried them away and no place was found for them, and the stone 
that smote them became a great mountain and filled the whole 
earth." Now, if he was speaking of Christ's coming and setting 
up his kingdom on the ruins of all the others, Christ has not done 
it ; his doctrine was so unpopular he did not destroy a kingdom. 
But, returning to the first part of Daniel's interpretation, he says : 
" Thou, king, art a king of kings, for the God of heaven hath 
given thee a kingdom, power and strength and glory ; and where- 
soever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the 
fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made 
thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold. And after 
thee. shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee," and so on. I 
wish to call attention to the last I quoted, " That after thee shall 
arise another kingdom inferior to thee," signifying, if he means 
anything, that his days through should be mighty. But this story 
pleased the king highly. The king was not only that head of 
gold, but was fine gold. "What Daniel told him about his being 
king of kings, and the extent of his dominions, of course the king 
knew all about that affair before without any dreaming, but of 
course Daniel knew the king would feel highly flattered to hear 
that his power was highly appreciated, even beyond all expecta- 
tion he ever had himself, and the result proves it so. Yerse 48 : 
" Then the king made Daniel a mighty man, and gave him many 
great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Baby- 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 39 

Ion." Could not most any man get a revelation, when it was as 
easily obtained as this, when his life was at stake if he did not, 
and eternal glory if he did ? If the reader even wants to believe 
a miracle (which applies to anything done out of the order of na- 
ture), in this case he has got to believe, first, that the king 
dreamed that pretty dream ; 2nd, that God revealed it to Dan- 
iel ; 3rd, that it was revealed for the benefit of the king, and not 
to save Daniel and all the wisdom of the land ; 4th, that God 
would do business in that round-about way, instead of directly to 
the king; 5th, that there was some object in God's doing it which 
no man can discover ; 6th, that, as the king was fine gold, he 
could or would not corrupt ; 7th, that his kingdom was a power- 
ful kingdom throughout his days, that there might be one after him 
inferior to his. Now, if a man was hungry enough for a miracle 
to swallow all this stretch of credulity, he might find something 
superhuman about this thing, but I certainly canuot see it; it looks 
to me as though Daniel could accomplish it all. And if Daniel 
could tell a dream, being skilled in them, as the king had forgotten 
his and would not know the difference, it ceases to be a miracle, 
for a thing is not a miracle that can be done on natural principles, 
no matter how many men say there is a God in it. In this case, 
before we had any evidence of a revelation to Daniel we would 
need one to show us that Daniel did not make up the dream, and, 
under the circumstances, it ought to be apparent to any reasonable 
man that he did. But there is one circumstance connected with this 
matter that settles the question beyond dispute, and that is, in a 
few years this golden king is driven by a conspiracy from his king- 
dom, to eat grass with the beasts of the field, and Daniel is the 
man that pronounces the sentence, under the color of interpreting 
another dream (4th chapter, 24th and 25th verses), hear him : 
" This is the interpretation, king, and this is the decree of the 
Most High, which is come upon my lord the king, that they shall 
drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of 



40 GIVE US THE TKUTH, 

the field, and they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen." Verse 
33 : "The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar, 
and he was driven from men and did eat grass as oxen, and his 
body was wet with the clew of heaven, till his hairs were grown 
like eagles' feathers and his nails like birds' claws." Reader, 
how changed is this story of Daniel's as soon as he has power and 
an army to execute his prediction is at hand, than it was when his 
life hung on the beauty of his story. The king had changed from 
gold to filthy clay, in Daniel's estimation. It does not look to me 
as though the king would change so much in so little time, from 
the finest golden monarch of earth to a beast of the field ; it looks 
to me as though Daniel's divinity was to serve his own ends and 
not the king's. 

But in Daniel's history God does another little trick, he shuts 
the lions' mouths, so they do not harm Daniel during a night. 
It seems Darius was flattered to pass a decree that all that 
prayed to any other god but him should be cast into the den of 
lions. Daniel continued to pray as before, and was reported, and 
the king was sorry the decree had gone forth ; but they tell him 
the law of the Medes and Persians changeth not, and, of course, 
he had to execute the order, and Daniel was cast in, and the 
king did not sleep all night ; this shows his deep interest in Dan- 
iel, and he could do as much as to feed the lions well before Dan- 
iel was cast in and while he was there, and if they were well fed 
they would not harm a kid, God would shut their mouths so tight, 
especially after devouring Daniel's assailants, they were satisfied. 
The little school book tells us the danger is in crossing the path of 
a hungry lion, not one that is well fed. The reader will see by 
this how they labored to prove God was with them, to resort to 
such foolish tricks as this for evidence of their divinity. 

But we notice, also, that Daniel begins to dream and see visions 
himself, and interprets them himself, and thus he runs the whole 
machine to suit himself. And we learn that after he had a vision, 
in one case, he was sick, it hurt him so (see 8th chapter) ; after 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 41 

another, 10th chapter, 8th verse reads: "Therefore I was left 
alone and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in 
me." This shows the great struggle with the mesmeric forces of 
the body ; he, perhaps, entered the psychological state, and saw 
the same as Swedenborg and many others, things that they could 
not if awake, but all the visions were human, not superhuman, 
and are produced by the same philosophy as dreams, a portion of 
the brain or faculties of the mind being awake while the remainder 
is paralyzed or asleep, but with a proper combination may see 
passing events truly, and even past events, but never future with 
any more liability than dreaming ; they cannot see what never 
was, although there are instances of that kind related of Joan of 
Arc, and others, but not well enough attested to become a fact. 
It is not my purpose, in this little work, to show all the results 
throughout the permutation of the faculties, being a certain por- 
tion awake while others are paralyzed by natural sleep or mesmeric 
force. But to illustrate Daniel's case and spiritualism, imagine the 
faculties all dormant, from whatever cause, but size, color, form, 
individuality and weight, the vision will be spirits or folks, and 
with language active they will hear them talk, and with venera- 
tion, hope and wonder active, the person will fairly pass into the 
spirit world with ecstasy and delight. All the scenes are modified 
by the condition of the brain, whether partially or totally paral- 
yzed. These facts are well attested in Combs' and Dr. Spurzeim's 
phrenologies, where they have witnessed in several patients a dis- 
eased brain, causing a great rush of blood to the diseased or excited 
portions, until its activity overpowered the remaining portions, 
producing a variety of these singular phenomena. Whether pro- 
duced by disease or mesmeric force, to see visions depends upon 
the paralyzation of a portion of the brain while the remainder is 
active, and sometimes in the cataleptic state, being the nearest state 
to death. It is not our design to enter this subject of the phi- 
losophy of mysterious agents, it would make a volume of itself, 



42 GIVE US THE TEUTH, 

but suffice to say, that magnetism, electricity, force of human will, 
condition of the system, are the agents in producing all the myste- 
ries we behold in this line. The operation of these laws upon 
the human system is a subject but imperfectly understood, but the 
main difference, if not the only, between a vision and a dream is, 
that the former is a harder struggle with the forces of the system, 
and from the activity of a different class of organs, the subject is 
able to see present and past events, and perhaps future, as is re- 
corded of Swedenborg, in our day, and of the Witch of Endor, 
and Huldah the prophetess, and all through time. Moses warns 
his people against the evil of divination and having familiar spirits ; 
and again, in our day, we have from Peter Cartwright, a Metho- 
dist preacher, through a storm of excitement they had what he 
termed the jerks, and one man he mentions broke his neck, and 
(page 51) he says : " From these wild. exercises another great evil 
arose from the heated imaginations of some ; they professed to fall 
into a trance and see visions, they would fall at meeting, sometimes 
at home, and lay apparently powerless and motionless for days, 
and sometimes for a week, without food or drink, and when they 
came to, the};- professed to have seen heaven and hell, to have seen 
God, angels, the devil and the damned; they would prophesy 
under the pretense of divine inspiration, predict the time of the 
end of the world and the ushering in of the great millenium. 
This was the most troublesome delusion of all, it made such an 
appeal to the ignorance of the people, even saints as well as sin- 
ners." This shows us the mysteries of our own person, but the 
great enthusiast, Cartwright, did not look any farther than the 
heated imagination producing this phenomenon, and yet here were 
visions, and these men that lay powerless a week without food 
and told these visions, is it likely they meant to lie ? There is no 
doubt but what they thought they saw these things, as we do in our 
dreams ; they saw just as Peter saw when he saw a sheet let down 
three times from heaven, with a four-footed beast upon it, and 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 43 

fowls, as related Acts 10. This passed before Peter's mind as a 
reality, while it was but a dream ; God never let down a four- 
cornered sheet, no one claims so ; visions or dreams passed before 
Daniel's mind, he never saw a ram pushing to the north, south and 
west, but the scene passed before his eyes as curious dreams do 
before ours, only Daniel and Peter were in a trance, like Cart- 
wright's subjects, and when he came out he was sick. God would 
not make a man sick to give him a revelation ; if he di'd, such reve- 
lations would soon be dreaded. But this is one branch of the same 
power that has in all time claimed to divine, but I very much doubt 
whether man, from any cause whatever, ever divined, farther than 
his judgment would tell him a thing would come about ; that 
some curious dreams might be construed to apply to some event 
that afterwards came about, we know has been done, and looked 
upon as revelation. It is hard to believe that God would show 
Daniel, or any other man, the rise and fall of empires by rams and 
mongrel images, that could be applied to any condition of the 
country that might afterwards turn up. Daniel knew that the 
Mede and Persian empires were in a tottering condition, and by- 
the political factions he formed some idea of what would be, some 
parties weak, others strong, and by the portions of the country 
where the factions were the strongest he would naturally, when in 
a trance, see them triumph ; he would see the direction the ram 
was pushing, and the chain of events would pass before his mind 
picturing brilliantly his imagination when awake. His prediction 
of great princes that should arise and do wonders is nothing strange 
for a man like him ; he dwelt in the wonderful, and labored like 
every one else to make the people believe him a wonderful man. 
Hear what he says (10th chapter, 11th and Pith verses) : "And 
he said unto me, Daniel, a man greatly beloved, * * unto 
thee am I now sent. Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel, for 
from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and 
to chasten thyself before God, thy words were heard, and I am 



44 GIVE US THE TKUTH, 

come for thy words." The fact is, if God or his angels loved 
Daniel as well as he represents, they would not very likely be 
telling him such flattery, and if they did, Daniel must have been 
in a dearth for praise to praise himself in this manner. 8th chap- 
ter, 1st verse, he says: "A vision appeared unto me, even unto 
me, Daniel." I quote these passages to show that Daniel, like 
other men, had love for praise, and was pleased to think that he, 
even he, as he represents to the people, could have and was hon- 
ored with a vision from the Lord, and should be ranked with the 
highest, as communion with God was the highest of earthly hon- 
ors. Without detracting, or wishing to, anything from Daniel, we 
want the truth ; if this was the height Cas the passages show) of 
Daniel's ambition, to gain esteem and be reckoned One of God's 
prophets, like all men, he would labor for that end, and being 
skilled in dreams and visions he could accomplish that end, even 
if he never had a trance or a dream, but we suppose he did have 
both. But as his visions of princes and powers are such as to 
apply to almost any age or condition of the world, there is no reve- 
lation about it, because nothing is revealed. The passage that 
theologians apply to Christ will generally apply to Cassar, Bona- 
parte, Alexander, or a score of others, with more consistency, for 
they did accomplish something, but Christ did not destroy a power 
or establish one ; but Daniel might have supposed a powerful 
prince was coming that would break in pieces all other kingdoms ; 
there is no doubt they all looked for such a prince from the Lord 
from the days of Abraham, and all the prophets sang the same 
song, but Christ was not the prince they had been looking for, and 
the Jews would not receive him. The prophets, like Daniel, pre- 
dicted a Saviour that should come with power and great glory, and 
Christ, that could or would not protect himself against the Jews, 
but ran several times for fear they would kill him, wa3 not what 
they expected. It looks to us as though if Christ was revealed 
he would have been properly revealed ; when he came, the people 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 45 

would have known him. That the prophets, Daniel included, ex- 
pected a Saviour, is probable, but that does not prove that they 
had any revelation that one was coming ; a man may expect to be 
transformed into a comet, but that does not make it so. There is 
quite a difference between faith and reality ; we may believe an 
innocent man guilty and hang him, and so admitting that a 
powerful, prince was predicted and looked for, as there is reason to 
believe, is no evidence that they knew anything about it, further 
than human opinion or human speculation. And even admitting 
that Christ was of divine origin, and they foretold that in the 
course of time, before the end of the world, a man of divine origin 
should come, does not prove their foreknowledge of the fact any 
more than of mine if I predict the death of a man a certain day, 
and he falls and breaks his neck that day. In the history of man 
many similitudes of that have occurred; it is only a singular coinci- 
dence. If God, from any cause, saw fit to send his Son for the 
benefit of man, and men, from the same cause, felt their need and 
had faith to believe that God would heed their desires and send 
them a righteous teacher, a great prince, and God did not disap- 
point them, being, as Jonah said, a gracious God, and sent his Son, 
then we would be destitute of any evidence that they knew of any 
certainty that a great prince was coming. 

But, to close this train of reasoning, there has been no superhu- 
man man or prince on this globe within our historic period ; that 
is what we will make appear before you leave us. Truth is what 
we are after, not the wonderful and miraculous. Daniel tells us 
that the time of the fulfillment of his vision should be " time, 
times and half a time." Now, if there is any revelation about any 
part of the dream this is a portion of it, and scholars, like so 
many idiots, have figured and racked their brains over this dream 
and learned nothing. They have fixed the time, but the world rolls 
on as before, and have cried, Daniel, great is the mystery of thy 
dreams ; yes, Daniel, thy dreams. It seems that with but a little 



46 GIVE US THE TKUTH, 

reason mankind could see there was nothing revealed or they could 
figure it, and if they cannot figure it there is nothing revealed to 
figure from ; if nothing is revealed to figure from, then it is not 
revelation, no divinity about it, but simply a vision or dream. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

We have passed briefly through the Old Testament, and have 
shown you the arguments, or a part of them, upon which Moses' 
divinity was claimed. We have shown, by a few examples, how 
men prophesied and fulfilled the same, and we now propose to 
show you that Christ is the result of prophesy, that is, that he was 
brought through what we might irma prophetic machine — was 
God because he was prophesied as such, and claimed to be God 
from the fact that he was brought about as the prophets predicted 
he would be, while we hope to be able to show you that the peo- 
ple fulfilled the prediction as Solomon did when he thrust out Abi- 
athar, that he (Solomon) might fulfill the word of the Lord spoken 
in Shiloh. We expect to show you that men fulfilled prediction 
to prove the divinity of Christ, and in this foolish manner made a 
God by rule. We will then explain his miracles, and notice the 
divinity of his doctrine. 

Our purpose now is to prove by Christ's own witnesses his hu- 
man origin, and that he possessed human powers, and no more. 
We call Christ's own witnesses, it being a rule of law that a man 
cannot impeach his own. testimony. We will first call St. Luke. 
Luke says (first chapter, 5th verse) : " There was, in the days of 
Herod the king, a certain priest named Zacharias." Verse 11: 
"And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord, standing on 
the right side of the altar of incense." Verse 13: "The angel 
said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard, and thy 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 47 

wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name 
John." Verse 14: "And thou shalt have jo y and gladness; and 
man j shall rejoice at his birth, for he shall be great in the sight of 
the Lord." Verse 16: "And many of the children of Israel 
shall he turn to the Lord their God." Verse 17 : "And he shall 
go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of 
the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the 
just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." Verse 19 : 
"And the angel, answering, said, I am Gabriel." Verse 24 : "And af- 
ter those days his wife Elizabeth conceived." Reader, we have now 
got John under way, and have had a long course of instruction as 
to what John should do; does it not look as though they were mak- 
ing out his programme for him to work by when he comes, as the 
priests and Huldah gave Josiah his, and as Solomon turned out 
Abiathar that he might fulfill the word of the Lord that was spoken 
in Shiloh (1 Kings ii, 27) ? Does it not look as though they were 
prescribing a course for John to follow, and to get up an excitement 
at his birth to give him character and influence, just as the result 
proved ? "Well, we have learned for a fact, at any rate, that this 
thing starts with a priest, and that the angel's name is Gabriel, 
and that the people should rejoice at his birth, and we expect the 
whole priesthood will obey the prediction. But, passing on six 
months, this same angel starts Christ, and we will show you that 
the mothers of both John and Christ are relatives, and that when 
Mary conceives she goes to salute her cousin Elizabeth, that is 
bringing John, showing the whole transaction was cooked up in the 
same family, by the same angel, which we will prove to be a man, 
by several Bible witnesses. Luke resumes his testimony and says 
(vs. 26, 27): "And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was 
sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin 
espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, 
and the virgin's name was Mary." Of course he must be of the 
house of David, to fulfill the Scriptures ; they must work strictly by 



48 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

rule, or his divinity would be disputed. Yerse 28 : " And the 
angel came in unto her and said, Hail, thou art highly favored. 
The Lord is with thee ; blessed art thou among women." Yerse 
29 : "And when she saw him she was troubled at his saying, and 
cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be." The 
reader will bear in mind that she is so familiar with this angel that 
she is not troubled or alarmed at his appearance, but at his saying, 
which we term indecent to talk to a virgin. Yerse 31 : "Behold, 
thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son, and shalt 
call his name Jesus ; he shall be great, and shall be called the Son 
of the Highest." Yerse 33 : "And he shall reign over the house 
of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end." 
Yerse 34 : " Then said Mary unto the angel, how shall this thing 
be, seeing I know not a man?" Yerse 35 : "And the angel an- 
swered and said unto her, the power of the Highest shall over- 
shadow thee." But, to encourage her a little farther, he says 
(verse 36): "And, behold, thy cousin Elizabeth, she hath con- 
ceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month with her." 
This was sufficient, the honest virgin was excited and said (verse 
38) : " Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according 
to thy word." Now, what was that word ? "We have just read 
it ; it was that the power of the Highest should overshadow her 
and produce that miraculous son. Yerse 39: "And Mary arose 
in those days and went into the hill country with haste, * * 
and entered the house of Zacharias and saluted Elizabeth." Now 
we have Christ under way, who is to be of divine origin, of course 
must be born of a virtuous virgin ; John could be brought by a 
married pair. We have now shown you what we declared, first, 
that it was the same angel in both cases ; second, that it was a 
family arrangement among relatives and acquaintances ; third, it 
commenced with the priest ; fourth, the visits were six months 
apart, to bring John first in birth as well as in preaching, and 
Christ to follow and come from the house of David. This was a 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 49 

nice arrangement, sure. This story would not need any farther 
argument, if you had not been taught from infancy that the Holy 
Ghost could generate with woman, which is as ridiculous as to 
suppose an alligator could generate with a comet — two opposite 
natures : think of it ! 

The question now arises, Who is this angel Gabriel? Rev. Mr. 
Covil says, in his Bible Lexicon, "Gabriel, man of God;" also he 
says, " One of the principal angels of heaven ; an archangel." This 
is what we believe ; he was a man of God, in those days occupying 
a high rank or position in the church. Daniel says (ix, 21) : "Yea, 
while I was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I 
had seen in a vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, 
touched me about the time of the evening oblation." Here 
Daniel evidently prayed himself into a trance, or electro-psycho- 
logical state, for he supposed he saw this angel and got a revelation 
from him. But the term man signifies human, pertaining to 
earth. Genesis i : " God made man." Gen. vi : " Man is flesh." 
This is the first we hear of man, and signifies a human being. 
Now whatever might have been Daniel's theory about the origin 
of these men, whether born of women by generating with gods, 
as is taught in Genesis vi, producing "men of renown," or some 
other; one thing is certain, he calls them men. Again (Rev. xxii), 
when John saw, as he thought, the most interesting part of God's 
dominions, he fell down to worship the angel that showed him 
those things, and that angel was one of his brethren. But Gen. 
xix, settles this question : " And there came two angels to Sodom 
at even ; and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them. And he said, 
Now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house and 
tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early and 
and go on your ways. And they said. Nay, but we will abide in 
the street all night. And he pressed upon them greatly, and they 
turned in unto him, * * and they did eat. But before they 
lay down, the men of the city compassed the house round, both 
5 



50 GIVE US THE TEUTH, 

old and young. * * And they called unto Lot and said, 
"Where are the men which came in to thee?" This needs no com- 
ment ; it tells us who angels were in those days. These angels had 
fled for some cause and were afraid to take shelter in Lot's house, 
but being his old acquaintances, as his going to meet them shows, 
he urged them to turn in, and go their way early in the morning. 
They turned in, washed their feet, and eat the feast Lot prepared 
for them, showing that they were men in their habits ; and the 
men who were after them also call them men. It does not make 
out that they were not men because the story goes on that they 
smote the people with darkness, so they could not find the door. 
It was in the night, and might have been very dark ; no account 
states that these men lost their eyesight, but Lot begged for them, 
and the people, who only wanted to see them out of curiosity, per- 
haps, went away. Neither does it prove that they were not men be- 
cause they saw the threatened condition of the country by volcanic 
action, hearing the thunderings in the earth, and advised Lot to 
leave, as no doubt many were doing. And after Lot left, " Abra- 
ham got up early in the morning and looked toward the land of 
the plain, and lo the smoke of the country went up as the smoke 
of a furnace." This shows that the smoke going up as the smoke 
of a furnace was volcanic action, that destroyed Sodom and the ad- 
jacent cities, the same as Pompeii and others ; there is no mystery 
about it ; and it was one of these angels that Zacharias and Mary 
saw, that is, one of the same nature (called, in the church, an 
angel; out of it, men,) that went to see Mary, and the circum- 
stances are strong that it was one of her acquaintances. If the 
Bible does not prove this angel to be a man of some tribe or sta- 
tion, it does not prove anything. When it describes a man, and 
says it is a man, as in this case of Lot, it ought to be sufficient to 
every one, especially those that reverence the Book above all oth- 
ers, that men of some order were called angels, even if disembod- 
ied spirits or celestial beings were termed angels too. Again, we 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 51 

have angels that ministered unto the churches. Paul says (1 Cor. 
vi, 3), " Know ye not that we shall judge angels ?" This would 
argue* that they were inferior to Paul's brethren, and that one that 
visited the virgin Mary I think was. 

It is needless to state that Elizabeth's time came, and she 
brought a son, and called his name John, and the babe praised 
God as all babies do. Excitement being part of the play, every 
sound the babe made of course was interpreted to be blessing 
God — a wonderful babe indeed. Isaac Wise, the great christian 
historian, in his historj^ of the Israelitish nation, vol. 1, page 57, 
speaking of the extravagant stories told by different legends of 
the birth of Moses, of his being previousiy f predicted, refusing any 
nurse but his mother, and so on, believing himself that Moses' 
birth was as simple as any man's, remarks : " There is no great 
man in history whose birth is not surrounded with the most extra- 
ordinary stories, announcing to the world that a great event has 
taken place." Turning to Mary, she brings a son too. If per- 
chance these two children had been girls, we should have heard of 
Gabriel around some other ladies at another time. Now of course 
all the demonstration possible is to be made at the birth of Christ ; 
his star is seen in the east by some wise men, who come to worship 
him; "and the star went before them, and came and stood over 
where the child was." This star story sounds rather poetical or 
mythological. But to create the wildest excitement the priests no 
doubt appear disguised as angels in the dark to a few shepherds, 
knowing that they would do just as they did — noise abroad what 
they had seen and heard, and the people would believe the story 
of honest-hearted shepherds, who had no object or interest in the 
matter to deceive them. Luke ii : " And there were shepherds 
keeping their flocks by night ; and lo the angel of the Lord came 
upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, 
and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear 
not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall 



52 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

be unto all people, for unto you is born this day, in the city of 
David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. * * And suddenly 
there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, Uprais- 
ing God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth 
peace, good will toward men." Yerses 15 to 19 : "And it came 
to pass when the angels were gone away from them, they came 
with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a 
manger ; and when they had seen it, they made known abroad the 
saying which was told them concerning this child ; and all that 
heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the 
shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them 
in her heart." Yes, Mary pondered these things in her heart. 
She was too honest to give credit to such a story, even about her 
own son ; she knew that the priests had fixed themselves, as did 
king Agrippa, with silver mantles, or something white, and went 
to the shepherds, knowing that they would spread it, and people 
would believe them and wonder. Would God send a host from 
heaven in the dark to scare two or three poor shepherds, and to 
publish his Son ? Can a man of ordinary sense believe God does 
business in this manner in the dark ? If God's object was to pub- 
lish his Son, would he not publish him in large assemblies, and 
cities, and in open daylight ? If it was not his object to publish 
him. why did he send a great host of angels to one or two shep- 
herds in the night ? The angels could do their shouting somewhere 
else. If God's object was only to benefit the shepherds that he 
made the communication, why did he not show himself to all the 
shepherds at different parts ? There is no use of talking : God is 
impartial ; he never revealed himself by a star to one or two wise 
men, and by the word of angels to a few shepherds, and call upon 
the world with but one witness afterward that claimed to have 
any sign to tell Christ from any other man, and that was the 
alighting on him of the Holy Ghost, which alighted on other men 
too. 



\ 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 53 

We will notice next how they worked by rule to fulfill the con- 
tradictory predictions of Scripture relative to Christ's birthplace. 
Matt, i : Herod demanded of them where Christ should be born. 
They answer (4th verse) : "In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it 
is written by the prophet." Verses 14, 15 : "He (Joseph) took the 
young child by night, and departed into Egypt. That it might be 
fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, 
Out of Egypt have I called my Son." Verse 23 : " And he 
(Joseph) came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might 
be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, He shall be called a 
Nazarene." This was their ridiculous mode of fulfilling Scripture, 
making a flimsy excuse for his shift of places, as though God 
brought it about, but declaring at every turn it was done to fulfill 
Scripture, just as it was done, of course, to prevent the trouble 
Jeremiah ran into when God deceived him. This shows how they 
labored ; going from Palestine to Egypt, from Egypt to Palestine, 
again traveling several hundred miles to bring the birthplaces all 
right — a thing they had to do as they were making a God by rule, 
and this proves, as much as any other circumstance, that Christ 
was the result of prophecy, a God was made by the predictions, the 
same that we would build a house after a plan. The angel gives 
Zacharias his part to perform ; leaves a programme how John shall 
perform, crying in the wilderness, according to the prophet Esaias, 
turning the people unto the Lord. The angel gives Mary her 
part to perform. The priests give the wise men and the shepherds 
their part to perform. And the prophets give Joseph his part, 
through the instructions of the priest, to perform, and they all 
work, and it is not strange they all make a wonderful man. It 
seems as though a man must be more stupid than a Hottentot that 
cannot see how this thing is cooked up. 



54 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 



CHAPTER IX. 

Next we hear of Christ he is twelve years old, and propounds 
some interesting smart questions to some doctors and lawyers, for a 
boy of his age, and tells his parents the wonderful saying, that he 
must be "about his Father's business." He was then subject to 
his father, who was a carpenter, and Christ is supposed to have 
worked at the trade with him until he commenced his public career. 
But soon a voice is heard in the wilderness ; it is John. Being 
old enough to act his part in this great drama, he fixes himself in 
a camel skin, with a leather girdle to hold his traps together, and 
eats locusts and wild honey, to represent a wild man, correspond- 
ing with the predictions of Esaias, of a voice that should be heard 
in the wilderness. Then he begins to cry (Matt, iii) : u Repent ye, 
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Prepare ye the way of 
the Lord, and make his paths straight." This is the speech that 
John tells us, by and by, that Esaias told him to deliver. But 
when a few came to him to learn what was up, John salutes them 
in the following affectionate manner : " ye generation of vipers, 
who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come ? " He 
puts on a mighty air, so that Luke, in telling the story (iii, 15), 
says : " And as the people were in expectation, all men mused 
whether he were the Christ or not." This shows us that the peo- 
ple were in the greatest enthusiasm, ready to believe John, or any 
other man, was Christ, if John tells them so. But John says to 
them : " I baptize you with water, but one mightier than I cometh 
after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down 
and unloose ; he shall baptize you with Holy Ghost and with fire." 
You will see that this was sharp play. John being the first man 
in all history that acknowledged a superior, and by putting on 
such an important air, and then comparing himself with Christ, 
that he was not worthy to unloose his shoe strings, in fact, of no 



THOUGH THE HEAYENS FALL. 55 

account at all, but sounded it loud, a mighty man comes after me, 
fired the people, so that John only had, as we will soon see, to 
show them Christ, and it was sufficient. 

We will call the apostle John, and take his testimony. After 
Christ was baptized, John introduces Christ, and gives his sign for 
telling Christ from any other man. The apostle John gives John's 
words, (i, 31 to 37): "And I knew him not, but that he should 
be made manifest unto Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with 
water." Now mark John's sign for telling Christ. John says : 
"And I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and 
it abode upon him. And I knew him not, but he that sent me to 
baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt 
see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he 
which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. * * Again the next 
day after, John stood and two of his disciples, and looking upon 
Jesus as he walked, he said, Behold the Lamb of God ; and the 
two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus." Here 
we learn that John had, taking his own word for it, no other earthly 
sign of telling Christ from any other man, except that the Spirit or 
Holy Ghost descended upon him. Luke (chap, iii) says, it was in 
" bodily shape like a dove upon him." But John claims his sign 
that was first given him, was, "upon whom he saw the Spirit de- 
scending " — no dove about it. But John says, it was like a 
dove. Luke says, it was a bodily shape like a dove ; Matthew 
(chap, iii) says, it descended like a dove ; Mark (chap, ii) says, the 
Spirit was like a dove. And they all agree it lit upon him like a 
dove. From these stories I should believe, if anything lit upon 
him, it was a dove, for I do not think, as we have not seen any 
of the material for eighteen hundred years, that it was so plenty 
then that everything that looked like a dove was the Holy Ghost. 
But suppose it was the Holy Ghost ; it lit upon men, showered 
down upon the day of Pentecost, and Luke ii, 25 reads, "And be- 
hold there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and 



56 GIVE US THE TEUTH, 

the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of 
Israel, and the Holy Ghost was upon him." Now by John's own 
testimony, if he had seen Simeon first, Simeon would have been 
the Lord, by John's own sign of telling Christ from any other 
man. 

It seems John is introducing Christ; he shows him to two 
of his disciples, they then follow Christ, and he does not want 
them to know that Christ is his cousin, and that he has known 
him from boyhood, for fear they will look behind the curtain, so he 
tells them he did not know him, when Matthew (chap, hi) tells us, 
that John said to Christ, when he wanted John to baptize him, "I 
have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me ?" But of 
course, John says this for a blind, to keep up the idea what a 
mighty man Christ was ; for on him depended the success of them 
all. The apostle John (chap, i) says, the Jews sent priests and 
Levites from Jerusalem to inquire who John was. They said, 
" Art thou Elias? John says, I am not. Art thou that prophet? 
He said, No. Then they said, Who art thou ? What sayest thou 
of thyself? He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilder- 
ness, make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet 
Esaias." They next ask him why he baptized then, if he be not 
Christ, Elias, or that prophet. This shows us how sharp the Jews 
looked into this thing, and they saw by John's answer that he had 
stepped into a prediction to fulfill it ; that that was his part of the 
play. They were looking for a Christ that could establish his own 
divinity, revolutionize the world, destroy and break in pieces all 
the kingdoms of the earth, and set up an everlasting kingdom on 
their ruins, by his influence and God-like character and power ; 
but in this case they found an ephemeral man, endeavoring to bring 
about a God through a prophetic machine, and they were com- 
pletely disgusted. 



THOUGH THE HEAYENS FALL. 57 



CHAPTER X . 

"We will now look at a few of Christ's miracles. We must 
make due allowance, in looking at these mysterious wonders, for 
an excited people ; not excited from anything Christ had done, 
but what they expected him to do. The whole story so far shows 
that through the combined power of the church, they had got the 
people in the wildest excitement about Christ before they saw him. 
When people are so excited as to follow anybody for a God that a 
man like John would point out, we must expect that every move 
Christ makes is a miracle to such men as these. St. John (chap. 
i), tells us, that Philip, one of Christ's disciples, sets about to find 
Nathaniel, and brings him to Christ, and Christ knows him, and 
tells him his nativity, which astonishes Nathaniel, and he remarks, 
I see that thou art a prophet. Christ answers, " Greater miracles 
than this will I show thee." Christ knew this was no miracle, or 
would not be as soon as Nathaniel learned that Philip who brought 
him was Christ's disciple, and most likely suggested to Christ who 
he was going after. ■ It appears they were just introducing in these 
days the wonder of the world, and every time Christ speaks they 
expect it to be something supernatural, from the fact as they sup- 
pose it come from a supernatural being it could not be common. 
If this was not Nathaniel's view of Christ he might have spoken 
in a complimentary manner, that he noticed Christ was a prophet, 
as all great men were prophets in those days. 

Next we hear of Christ he is to a marriage feast of revelry and 
drinking, and does his wine miracle, and if pious believers will 
read their Bible carefully they will find no miracle here. Every 
one is supposed to know that a marriage feast in those days, as 
well as now, was not a place of long faces but exuberant spirits, 
hilarity and mirth, where wine was freely drank, . and the guests 
consequently would be incompetent judges (when they had "well 



58 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

drunk," as the ruler of the feast declares,) of a miracle of this kind. 
John ii, 9, 10 : " And when the ruler of the feast had tasted the 
water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was, the 
governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and said unto him, 
Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine, and when 
men have well drunk, then that which is worse ; but thou hast 
kept the good wine until now." Here is the ruler's story, and we 
must consider that it is a marriage feast, where it would be singu- 
lar if some jokes were not cracked off, and as Christ, no doubt, 
was the man that evening, when their wine was gone he sends in 
his wine that corresponded with his teaching, pure cold water, and 
its coming under the name of Christ's wine the ruler makes an 
appropriate joke of it, that it was even better than the first wine. 
This is the probable solution, as Christ taught sobriety and not 
wine drinking. But to take a christian view, that that feast was 
a rather serious affair, we will look at it and see how it appears. 
The ruler of the feast gives the custom and says : " Every man 
at the beginning doth set forth good wine, and when men have 
well drunk (that is, have drank until they cannot tell good wine 
from poor,) then that which is worse ; but thou hast kept the good 
wine until now." This is so plain that it needs no comment, that 
Christ's wine was not the first wine — that it was not drank in the 
place of the first wine which by the custom was good, but "was 
kept until now," when men drink that which is worse; but the 
ruler says Christ's wine was the best, that is, even better than the 
first wine. How could the ruler of the feast say that Christ's wine 
was "kept until now," the time that men had poor wine, if 
Christ's wine was the first on the feast ? The text says that the 
ruler "knew not from whence the water that was made wine 
came." If this was the fact, and Christ's wine came on first, what 
was the necessity of the ruler's giving the custom that men brought 
on the best wine first ? Christ's being the best in his estimation 
this would be all straight, nothing queer or uncommon about it, 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 59 

but this is not the case. The ruler sajs it was kept until the time 
when men drank that which was worse, and was the best wine ; 
this was the mystery to the ruler, not understanding why it was 
done so, as the text shows. This is as clear as the mid-day sun, 
but christians have run over it, supposing that Christ's wine was 
the first and only wine at the feast, from a preceding verse which 
reads, "And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus said, 
They have no wine." This is plain to me that they were out of 
wine — it was all drank up, and when they sent for more, the 
mother of Jesus very naturally replied, "We have none, have no 
wine, are out, all natural equivalent expressions. The ruler would 
not send for wine when he knew they had no wine from the start, 
neither would those whose business it was to bring on the wine 
call for what they knew they had not got ; hence the evidence is 
clear, including both circumstantial and the ruler's evidence, 
amounting to positive evidence that they had well drank. If this 
is a fact that the ruler states, that Christ's wine was kept until 
now when men were so drunk that poor wine answered as well as 
any, and even if he thought, as he says, that Christ's was the best, 
better than the first, it shows us their incompetency to judge. Mr. 
Covil tells us that in those days they had concentrated wine, that 
is, it was made about the consistency of honey, and before drink- 
ing it they reduced it with water. So by the christian's own 
authority we notice that this wonder was easily done. We notice 
they came to Christ's mother for wine, showing she superintended 
that department, and by the force of a clique of priests she might 
in a degree have yielded the honesty of youth, not daring to resent 
the sweeping tide that was in favor of her son, and labored with 
the rest for his greatness. But let that be as it may : when we 
see all the chances they needed to put, as we might say, the seeds 
of wine in the jars, and call the servants to fill them with water, 
and when we learn also the condition of the men to judge even if 
it had been colored water, filled with fine aromatics, such as they 



60 GIVE US THE TRUTH, ! 

put into their best wine, it could have been so flavored as to taste 
better no doubt than their poor wine; and being well drunk, as 
the text impliedly informs us, thought it was the best, the miracle 
disappears. But to go back, and suppose it to be one of the most 
singular feasts in the world, no wine to make men drunk until Christ 
made some, we see that the wine department was under the control 
of Christ's nearest friends, they could arrange it just as they pleased, 
and we notice how eager John is to relate the wonderful event by 
opening the chapter with this miraculous story. All these things 
are to be considered. "We are after truth, and if Christ is God and 
man both, as the pious believer supposes, we want to see the God as 
well as the man ; we want to see him superhuman. This wine 
miracle is within the reach of men — an appearance of miracle that 
man can bring about. We are not to take it as a miracle because 
John, or some other man, believed it was fairly done, and not a 
trick ; we want to know that it was not a trick • that is the evi- 
dence of divinity we are after. 

Christians only claim that God formed the earth from chaos; 
he did not create, he formed man and animals from the dust of the 
earth ; and we, as well as Moses, have learned the truth of that, 
that man is of the elements. But here is a miracle that transcends 
all power heretofore given to God. Christ creates properties or 
elements; he makes wine out of water that does not contain the 
elements of wine. Christ outdoes his father, in this respect, 
according to John's story. And I ask, would God take this way 
to publish himself? Does this look like God here to this feast 
doing such flimsy tricks ? If God wanted to establish his doctrine, 
could he not do it? Could he not move the mountains, shake the 
earth, annihilate the inhabitants and restore them again, rend the 
earth to atoms and replace it again, and settle his supremacy in 
five minutes, as well as to be striving with his Spirit eternally and 
let the majority go to perdition at last ? A God with such crea- 
tive powers as christians believe, that makes worlds and universes 
out of nothing, could do this consistently, and why don't he ? 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 61 

But passing along, Christ preaches some. Knowing his inability 
to defend himself, he informs the people that God has changed his 
mind ; it is not an eye for an ej^e, a tooth for a tooth, but " I tell 
ye nay, resist not evil." This gives him a chance to run when the 
Jews press him, as he several times did. John v, 18 : "There- 
fore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had 
broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making 
himself equal with God ; " and Christ, knowing that John was his 
only witness that he was God, says, (verse 36), "I have greater 
witness than John ; the works that I do, bear witness of me that 
the Father hath sent me." The reader will notice that the only 
witness he claims is his cousin John, except his works, and that is 
what we are looking at now. That he was kind to the sick we 
all know, and it was his interest to be. He cures a blind man 
with spittle and clay ; there is no evidence of divinity about that, 
because a simple remedy helped his eyes ; most astonishing simple 
remedies often perform the greatest cures. A man is often said to 
be born blind that has an imperfect sight, and it was an easy mat- 
ter to make the man acknowledge his eyesight was improved when 
faith was the element taught that would do wonders, and he had con- 
fidence in the ability of Christ to do what he said. There have 
been men in all ages — one in Chicago in 1866 — that pretended to 
cure by a touch, and made hundreds believe it. Stories from an 
excited populace of ignorant people prove nothing ; it was very 
few learned men that believed Christ ; he chose ignorant fisher- 
men ; they were more easily persuaded, while the scientific world 
moved on as before, historians barely mentioning his existence. 
Even Josephus, (although a Jew by birth, he favored the Roman 
army) speaks of a man they called Christ, but speaks more highly 
of James, Christ's brother. 



62 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 



CHAPTER XI. 

Christ continues yet to do miracles. John vi, 17-21 : " And it 
was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them. And the sea 
arose by reason of a great wind that blew. So when they had 
rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus 
walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship." Here is a 
miracle sure, but it is most too good a one. That Christ should 
walk on the water that is all proper, but that they should see him 
coming almost two miles in a dark night and a high gale ! They 
could not have seen him walking if his legs had been two blazes 
of fire, but Christ was not a blaze, nor a blaze around his face or 
body, as some pictures represent, to stamp awe in the minds of 
children, but was man — man in appearance, so that he stood in 
the midst of men unknown, and was introduced by John that the 
people who wished might follow him — man in every respect, and 
could not be seen, in a dark, windy night, when the ship was toss- 
ing and the sea raging, one single rod. But verse 21 says: 
" And they willingly received him into the ship, and immediately 
the ship was at the land whither they went." This no doubt 
reveals the secret. The words "immediately at land" mean 
something, if the ship was immediately at land when he got into it, 
as they say ; Christ went over some other way and met them at the 
shore and came on board the ship, or else he by such power as he 
never exhibited to the world set the ship from midst the ocean to 
land, for the text is plain that when they received him into the ship 
the ship was immediately at land. There was no immediately 
going to land about it, but was immediately at land ; making it 
plain that Christ met them there. These miracles done in the 
dark I have but little confidence in, at the best, men's eyes are so 
apt to deceive them, even if they mean to be honest in what they 
report. 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 63 

Well, passing on, John (chap, vii) says: " Jesus walked in 
Galilee because the Jews sought to kill him. His brethren said 
unto him, Depart hence and go into Judea, that thy disciples also 
may see the works that thou doest, for there is no man that doeth 
anything in secret, and seeketh to be known openly. If thou do 
these things, show thyself to the world. For neither did his 
brethren believe in him." Is it not strange that Christ was afraid 
the Jews would kill him, looking at him in the light of being a 
God ? Is it not strange that Christ's own brothers that were 
brought up with him, could not in any manner find anything about 
him that showed him to be superior to man? Is it not strange 
that men who believed him by report, but upon following him 
found out to their satisfaction that he was not God, and left him ? 
The Jews say unto him, (chap, x) : "If thou be the Christ, tell 
us plainly." Christ answers, " I and my Father are one." " Then 
the Jews took up stones to stone him ; and said, for a good work 
we stone thee not, but for blasphemy ; being man, and calling thy- 
self God." (Verses 30, 31) : " They sought to take him, but he 
escaped out of their hand, and went away beyond Jordan, into 
the place where John first began to baptize." Who knew Christ 
better than these learned Jews ? They peer into the matter sharp. 
Some say, he hath a devil ; others say, he heals the sick, and 
doeth many wondrous works ; others say, nay, he deceiveth the 
people. They probe the matter, like men of sense, not wanting to 
be deceived by every enthusiast that turns up ; and after careful 
examination, these learned men decide that it is all deception and 
delusion. So they seek to take him, but he fled into the wilder- 
ness, where. John began to baptize. Does it not seem strange that 
men will flee to a person to protect them against the wiles of the 
devil, that cannot protect himself against the Jews ? This was a 
singular mode of proving his divinity. We can exclaim, Great 
is the mystery of Godliness ! In these hasty retreats, we do not 
understand it. 



64 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

But Christ, not being content with this Cruso life, feeling his mor- 
tification, sees plainly that he has got to make a desperate effort 
or sink into disgrace and oblivion, ventures out to raise a dead 
man, which, if real, would look something like doing business. A 
man not only dead, but partially decayed, that had been buried 
four days, as they claim. In John (chap, xi), we learn that it was 
not a mere happen-so, but this was an affair of family acquaintance 
again. Now one thing we know, God is impartial; if Christ 
raised a dead man, it was his God nature and not his man's, of 
course, (as christians claim two natures in the same person) ; then 
if it was his divine nature, that divine nature knows no sympathy 
for one more than another, but sends rain on the just and unjust 
alike, and would not resort to a family acquaintance to do a con- 
vincing miracle ; besides, it would not be policy to do so, for the 
circumstances are plain that it was done not for a favor to a friend, 
but Christ says, (4th verse) : " This sickness is not unto death, 
but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified 
thereby." This is what we believe, just what he says, that the 
sickness was not unto death, but that he might be glorified. The 
words "not unto death" were well put in, if the thing proved a 
failure. Well, to begin : " Now a certain man lay sick, named 
Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. It 
was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped 
his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. * * 
Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister and Lazarus." Here we 
learn where it was, and who it was, and their love for each other, 
and of course Christ's friends, and not only friends but lovers, will 
do what they can to extricate him from the dilemma into which the 
Jews had driven him. But, "When he had heard therefore that 
he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he 
was." This shows that Christ was in no haste to relieve his friend 
from the pains and distress of a death-bed scene, but waited a cou- 
ple of days to let his friend suffer and die, and after he had gone 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 65 

to his rest bring hiixi back to this world, which is a "poor dung- 
hill of probationary life ; " that would be a likely story. Verse 
7 : " Then after that he said to his disciples, Let us go into 
Judea again." It appears they were afraid that Christ would get 
stoned, but after some argument, Christ said, (verse 11): "Our 
friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of 
sleep. Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep he doeth well." 
Christ being outdone this time in his three-fold language that he 
always uses, as in this case would apply to sleep, trance or death, 
. was forced to say in a short manner, " Lazarus is dead ; but I am 
glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may 
believe." This shows how anxious he was that they should 
believe, and how glad he was that he was not there, so as he 
thought they would not think it a farce of his getting up, but 
would believe it a real resurrection. Verse 16 : Thomas called 
unto his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with 
him." Verse 17: "And when Jesus came, he found he had 
lain in the grave four days already." But Martha lets out the 
secret. Hear her, in the presence of many Jews that had gath- 
ered to comfort her, and witness the resurrection, which most 
likely she intimated by what she says to Christ in their presence. 
She says, (verses 21, 22): "Lord if thou hadst been here, my 
brother had not died. But I know, even now, whatsoever thou 
wilt ask of God, God will give it thee." How did she know 
Christ would raise him, or could do it ? But she knew that Christ 
would raise her brother and Christ understood her to mean that 
too, and answers her in the next verse, " Thy brother shall rise 
again." This is plain talk, and she afterward talking blind about 
his arising in the last day does not mitigate in the least her words 
that " If Christ had been there he would not have died, but I know 
now that what thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee," and 
Christ understood her just as we claim, and answered her accord- 
ingly. "Jesus, therefore, again groaning in himself, cometh to 
6 



QQ GIVE US THE TKUTH, 

the grave ; it was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, 
Take away the stone." This is enough for me. Lazarus, instead 
of being put in the ground where dead men were put, was nicely 
laid away in a cave or crevice in some rock, that the top could be 
covered over with a stone. Would they bury a dead man in this I 
way, that any one might roll away the stone, and the body become J 
the prey of dogs? No, Sir; this was not the way they done I 
business. Says Covil: "They sometimes used large caverns for I 
sepulchres, and had heavy stone doors, and were decorated and | 
whitewashed." This would look like doing business, doorway i 
ornamented and marked, and heavy stone doors whitewashed, 
making a sacred place of it. And where they did not have these! 
opportunities, they sometimes excavated sepulchres, but more 
generally buried in the ground. There was a cave at Engedi, 
that David hid in the sides of it six hundred men, and Saul entered 
the mouth of the cave without perceiving that any one was there ; 
(1 Samuel, xxiv). Similar to this was the cave of Machpelah,- 
which Abraham bought and paid his money for, to bury the dead ; 
(see Genesis xxiii). The 8th verse reads, " That I should bury 
my dead out of my sight." This looks as though they were 
buried in those large caves — not laid away in there. A man who 
enters the mammoth cave of Kentucky is not buried. Miners are 
not said to be buried, unless the earth falls in upon them. Even 
if a dead man was found in the mines, we could not say he was 
buried there, unless he was covered up. A man laid in a vault is 
not buried. David, with his six hundred men, in the cave, was 
not buried. This shows that merely being in a cave, dead or 
alive, is nor never was understood to be a burial. But suppose in 
this case of Lazarus we call it a burial, it was such a burial as we 
never .heard of before or since. If they were not convenient to a 
proper sepulchre, why did they not bury him in the ground where 
everybody else did — not lay him in a small cave or crack of a rock, 
that they could cover over with a stone ? such a place is where we 



THOUGH THE HEAVEN'S FALL. 67 

bury dogs, not men. But they roll away the stone. Christ has 
not power, of course, or he would have done the most convincing 
part that there certainly could be no trick about, and as Christ in 
the outset said that it was that he might be glorified. But he 
groans and weeps, to give it an awful solemnity, and Martha, to 
help the thing on, says, Lazarus stinks already, having been dead 
four days. Christ says, "Have I not said unto thee if thou 
wouldest believe I would show thee the glory of God ? " He then 
cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth.'' 1 And of course 
Lazarus jumps up, with all the habiliments of a corpse ; and the 
miracle is complete. Some such men as we will find everywhere 
were astonished, believed it then, and such ones believe it now ; 
rbut those who exercised judgment, went to the Pharisees and 
reported, and they saw that Christ was doing many miracles, and 
would destroy their nation if they allowed it. The 48th verse 
reads: "If we let him alone, all men will believe on him, and the 
Romans will come and take away our nation." This was what 
they feared, that many would believe and make trouble. The 
words " all men " is their expression, and means a large number, 
as it did "when all men came to John to be baptized," there did 
not one-tenth come, but a large number; this was what they 
feared, that many would believe and join the Romans, and they 
would be overpowered. Because they said he done many miracles 
does not even indicate that they thought they were genuine, as 
christians pretend. When we speak of a man's peddling nutmegs, 
we cannot infer that they are genuine, for the country has been 
flooded with wooden ones. On the contrary, they always denied 
his divinity, and every man knows it, and it is the height of folly 
to declare that the Jews believed his miracles. John, (chap, i), 
says: " He came unto his own, and his own received him not." 
But a few would believe anybody to be Christ that showed them 
a mystery. But the chief priests and Pharisees called a council 
and determined to put a stop to these proceedings, claiming to be 



68 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

of God, and did. This proves that there was no divinity about it. 
Yerses 53, 54 : " Then from that day forth they took council 
together to put him to death. Jesus, therefore, walked no more 
openly among the Jews, but went thence unto a country near to 
the wilderness." 

John (chap, i) tells us, " In the beginning was the "Word, and 
the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the 
Word was made flesh, and we beheld his glory." This agrees 
with Christ's teaching, that " I and my Father are one ; he that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father," etc. If I understand this 
language, Christ was God, not man ; if he was man too, so much 
addition ; if he was God and man both, as they tell us, we expect 
to see both in him. But when he runs for bis life, and his apostles 
tell us that he fled because the Jews sought to kill him, we can 
see the man very plain, but where is the God ? Would God run 
too ? 



CHAPTER XII. 

Many miracles that they claim Christ did, we have not enough of 
their history to enable us to detect the fraud. It seems he and a few 
of his disciples in Capernaum went to a city called Nain, and there 
they reported wonderful success. He brought a widow's son to life, 
and performed several cures, but the disciples have reported so 
many times about certain ones being dead, and Christ rebukes 
them, as he did in the case of Jairus' daughter that they thought 
was dead, (Christ says, " the maid is not dead "), that we cannot 
tell by their testimony whether a person was dead or alive ; they 
were too anxious. But it seems that Christ made it his business to 
heal the sick, lame and blind, everywhere he traveled, and this 
made him more famous than anything else he done ; and as far as 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 69 

this goes lie is entitled to the greatest praise ; and in his travels 
that he found one or two in a trance or cataleptic state, or fainted, 
supposed to be dead, is not strange, "We do know, if we know 
anything, that everything pertaining to Christ was looked at as a 
miracle by a few that followed him, and what Christ did not know, 
they supposed it for him, and gave it to us for Bible. For in- 
stance, John vi : " When Jesus then lifted up his eyes and saw a 
great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall 
we buy bread that these may eat ?" This shows Christ did not 
know, unless he was playing deception without any object, and 
christians ought not to believe Christ would do such a thing with 
an object. But John, to keep Christ's divinity good, says, in the 
next verse, " And this he said to prove him, for he himself knew 
what he would do." Now the fact is, and we can say it boldly, 
John did not know what Christ knew, or what he did not know ; 
it is made-up revelation, to cover up Christ's thoughtless expres- 
sions, and there are many such instances as this. But the feeding 
thousands with a little bread, and telling them they are full, is too 
simple to need any remarks. The reader must keep in mind that 
we only have Christ's witnesses as to his wonderful cures ; if we 
had the other side — the stories of those he did not neither could 
cure, that he told them had not enough faith — it would look differ- 
ent. We figure by analogy that many were not cured. He tells 
them their faith has made them whole, showing if they, like 
many, had not believed they could not have been cured. There 
are men through the country late years, curing in the same way : 
first get up an excitement, tell the person he is well ; the lame 
throw away their canes, and through faith in the physician strain 
every nerve and believe they are better. He says, God bless you, 
and home they go, thinking they are cured. Another comes along, 
throws his cane and Mis down ; the physician says, ye of little 
faith, Christ could not cure you ; and so on, from morning until 
night for several days this was carried on in the city of Chi- 



70 GIVE US THE TEUTH, 

cago and other places at this age, winter of 1866, and fools were 
made more foolish by one Dr. Newton. These faith cares are of 
the most dangerous character in the world ; scientific cures suit me 
best. But these wonders that Christ done in Capernaum that we 
have got no clue to, except their bare word, we have to judge by 
what we can find out. 

It seems when Christ gets back from Capernaum, where he re- 
stored the widow's son to life, he has lost his power. He says 
(Luke iv) : " Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician 
heal thyself; whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do 
also here in thy country. Yerily I say unto you, no prophet is 
without honor except in his own country ; but I tell you of a truth 
many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven 
was shut up three years and six months. But unto none of them 
was Elias sent, save unto a woman that was a widow." This was 
well said; he took the words out of their mouth about his doing 
wonders as he had done in Capernaum. What difference does the 
country make about his raising a dead man, if he was God ? Why 
does he so freely talk about Elias' prayer stopping the rain for three 
years and six months, when he knew that prayer was to stop rain 
from falling in a rainless district where it seldom or never rains in 
some parts of Egypt, whether he prayed or not. A hail-storm was 
looked upon by Pharaoh and claimed by Moses to be a miracle. 
This was a high strain of his about God's sending Elias to none 
of them except a widow woman. Soon as the people listened to 
this strain, Luke says (verses 28, 29) : "And all they in the syna- 
gogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and 
rose up and thrust him out of the city." 

It seems as though it was unnecessary to follow this character 
any further. Here we find his weakness displayed so foolishly as 
would shame a child, and the people became disgusted and mobbed 
him out of the city; and Luke goes on that the people "led him 
on top the hill that they might cast him down headlong, but he 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 71 

through them and went his way to a city in Galilee. " This 
was evidently a narrow escape from his own countrymen. Through 
the contention and strife he rushed through them and fled. Here 
we have to look very sharp to see the God, but a man is very 
apparent. The Jews had no fear of the power of Christ; the only 
trouble they had was to catch him. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

~W"e will briefly notice the doctrine that Christ preached, and 
see whether that was divine, or whether he preached the same 
doctrine the heathens did, that had no Bible. Christ's essential 
doctrine was, hell for the wicked, heaven for the righteous. Rev. 
Royal Robins says (vol. 1, page 189): " The literature of Greece 
was the glory of the whole earth ; no nation, ancient or modern, 
has surpassed the Greeks in literary taste and genius." Page 181, 
he says: "The Greeks, who were heathens, worshiped a great 
number of gods." Page 189, he says : "Of hell they have drawn 
a picture in the most gloomy and horrific colors, where men who 
have been remarkable for their wickedness are tortured with a 
variety of miseries adapted to their crimes. And the prospect of 
Elysium is described by Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and others, as 
beautiful and inviting in the highest degree." This is what a 
christian historian acknowledges, and every one knows that the 
Old Testament does not teach endless misery, but earthly judg- 
ments. Taking Daniel's dream or vision for authority, " that 
some should awake to shame and everlasting contempt," even if 
it could be proved to refer to the next state of existence, does not 
prove torture as Christ describes, where there would be wailing 
and gnashing of teeth. The expression that they would be "turned 



72 GIVE US THE TKUTH, 

into hell with all the nations that forget God," refers to the grave" 
(shed) or hell : temporal judgments of the Lord — destroy from the 
earth — turn into (sheol) the grave. There is no misery taught 
here beyond the grave. But before Christ, hundreds of years, the 
Greeks, who had no Bible, nor never did have, were preaching- 
Christ's doctrine of misery to the wicked beyond the grave, and 
heaven to the righteous. These men were the light of the world 
in learning. In sculpture and architecture they were our superiors 
to-day, says Robins. Their Cadmus invented the alphabet, 1519 
years B. C. Astronomy and oratory were carried to a high state 
of perfection. Here Demosthenes and Pericles awed the world by 
the power of their arguments. Here, on Mars Hill, the great 
Solon, 558 years B. C, instituted a tribunal of justice where the 
wise men of Greece dealt out justice and wisdom with such won- 
derful skill that the world looked on and wondered, but these men 
had no Bible, and Christ took their theories as the best of his clay. 
Their number of gods, it is true, exceeded ours. Christ reduced 
them to less than half a dozen, perhaps : Father, Son, Holy Ghost, 
Spirit, etc. But with the Greeks, their opinions were theories, not 
realities ; they were not chained to superstition, although they had 
many theories, but like the eagle, they soared higher and higher ; 
they were not afraid of science ; their Bible was the heavens and 
the earth. To them 

The grass that grew, 
The trees that wave, 
The thunder's roar, 
And the mountain blaze, 

"Was not miracle, miracle, miracle, as to the children Moses led 
before the sulphurous blaze of Sinai's top. 

But, turning to Christ, we find him expounding the doctrine or 
portions of it, modifying it in some respects, reducing their great num- 
ber of gods to about four, but christians are loth to admit more than 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 73 

three. Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and Spirit, are in the Scriptures 
as so many powers doing wonders, besides angels and archangels 
in heaven as well as earth; and the expression, "Let us make 
man," signifying a plurality of gods taught in Scripture, their 
number unknown. So it becomes evident that our Bible is as 
extravagant as the theories of the Greeks. But Christ preached 
this doctrine as reality, while with the Greeks it was only theories, 
and passed lightly over; they were not enslaved to ignorance, 
and asked to believe that the universes were created to light this 
earth, as Moses tells us, who evidently supposed that the stars 
were of no more account than so many candle blazes, all created 
expressly to light this earth by night. 

Christ also preaches a resurrection. But it was preached in all 
time before him. And to carry out the play that he was God, he 
had to proclaim his last great miracle, a resurrection from the 
dead ; and to prove by argument that he would arise, he tells them 
that a kernel does not sprout except it first die. Paul appeals to 
the same argument; while the fact is, a kernel that dies never 
sprouts, but rots in the ground. So if we had no other source but 
such teaching as this, we might feel certain that the ground would 
keep our bodies some time, as it undoubtedly will; but that the 
soul or spirit of man will triumph over the grave Ave all hope. 

It is unnecessary to state the particulars — the history is familiar. 
That Judas being with Christ a long time could not possibly dis- 
cover the God but only the man, betrayed him, and if Christ's time 
had come and he was ready, and knew Judas would betray him, 
as the apostles affirm, then Judas done the work of the Lord in 
betraying him, and ought not to be stigmatized as having a devil, 
for a devil would not do the work of the Lord in this manner; a 
devil would have sought to betray Christ when he was not ready. 
But reason, if we have any, tells us that Christ was ready when 
he could no longer escape from the Jews, judging from the circum- 
stances, which speak truer than words. But it is not strange that 
7 



74 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

Christ might have been afraid of Judas, and mentioned it before- 
hand ; also, Christ told his disciples that they would desert him. 
Such an expression as this would stimulate them more than any 
other, and he knew it, to stand by him ; but he knew he had not 
the power to protect himself and his disciples, and they would on 
that account desert him, as they did, and then his prediction would 
become evidence of his divinity, and this circumstance will illus ; 
trate many similar ones that the apostles give as evidence of his 
divinity. But Christ is crucified, and his body given to Joseph, 
who put it into a new sepulchre, and departed. The following 
day, says Matthew, (chap, xxvii), the only man that speaks 
originally of this circumstance, " they set a watch over the sepul- 
chre." This was waiting too long, but as he was to rise the third 
day, the Jews did not think it necessary to watch the sepulchre 
until about that time, but even the watch saw no one arise, and 
if the followers of Christ had believed themselves that he would 
arise, this would have been their last great test to the unbelieving 
Jews close to Jerusalem; they would have made a demonstration 
and called thousands to witness it. Their not doing it, shows 
that they knew better, for no one can believe they were so uncon- 
cerned in this matter as not to pay any attention to it whatever ; 
but the facts are plain that they removed the body before the 
watch came. But Matthew says : " The priests hired the watch 
to report that they slept, so that the disciples could have stolen 
him away." This is not a very reasonable story for Matthew, 
when the penalty was death if the ruler heard they slept ; but 
suppose they were men that could be hired to lie, and the priests 
could make it all right with the ruler, could not Christ's disciples 
hire this same set of liars to report to the Jews that they did not 
steal him away, if they found it necessary to do so. A poor rule 
that does not work both ways. Perhaps this watch made a good 
thing out of it, got money from both parties, if they were such a 
dishonest set as Matthew describes. But another idea. Matthew 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 75 

says : " They took the money and did as they were taught, and 
this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day." 
This expression, "until this day," signifies a great length of time, 
from the transpiration of all these wonders about Christ until he 
set down to record them. This must be considered, not only in 
this affair, but all others. Biblical scholars all admit that Mat- 
thew's time of writing is unknown. Covil admits that Mark wrote 
thirty years after Christ's death, and took his doctrine from Peter, 
who styled Mark his son, (see 1 Peter v, 13). And Peter was 
one of those unstable, fiery men that denied the Lord many times, 
or cursed him one hour and blessed him the next. But it is evi- 
dent Mark collected Peter's ideas at the times that he believed 
Christ, and not when he was denying his divinity : if we had 
Peter's other gospel it would be a different picture. Covil tells 
us, defining Luke : "A physician (Col. iv, 14) ; the author of the 
gospel which bears his name, and of the Acts of the Apostles. 
* * His gospel most probably was written thirty or thirty-one 
years after Christ's death, and the Acts of the Apostles soon 
after." Mr. Covil tells us : " John wrote his gospel at Ephesus, 
to confirm the divinity of the Son, in opposition to heretics, after 
Christ's death sixty-four years, or A. D. 97." Astonishing as this 
may seem to some, these are the facts ; pick up any Bible Dic- 
tionary of repute, reader, and you will find this same story that 
Mr. Covil tell* you: it is no secret — all theologians know it. 
Think of Mark's gospel second-handed from Peter ! This is very 
direct revelation ! 

But if Mark is good for one piece of revelation, he is for 
another, especially when confirmed by others. He says, when 
Christ was on the cross, he cried, " My God, my God, why hast 
thou forsaken me ? " Showing that Christ thought or wondered 
why God did not save him from his awful situation. Here hung 
a man in the agonies of death, struggling for life. Being an 
enthusiast from birth, he vainly expected that God would help 



76 GIVE US THE TKUTH, 

him in time of need. When he had exercised due caution to foil 
the enemy, but was at last overtaken, he, like all men, had but 
one hope, and that was in his God. When he saw there was no 
hopes of reprieve, that his life was fast ebbing away, in the last 
agonies of despair, about making his transit into that realm where 
all flesh is fast hastening, when this death scene passed before his 
mind, he became lost to the honors of this worl'd, and laying aside 
assumption and presumption, like a man in hopeless despair when 
from his heart will emanate his secret thoughts, he cries, " Oh my 
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " Like all men he 
acknowledges his dependence on one common Father of all man- 
kind. If he was God and man too he would not have cried with a 
loud voice, inquiring why God had forsaken him. If he and his 
Father were one, as he had said, even allowing the christian view 
that they were one in spirit or business, he would have known 
why God had forsaken him. When Christ acknowledged that 
there is no God about him, but is forsaken, it looks to us like a 
foregone conclusion to suppose his divinity can be established 
against his own acknowledgment. 

But we will remember that Matthew and Luke tell these same 
miraculous stories about the darkness and rending of the veil. 
The darkness was from the sixth to the ninth hour. There might 
have been an eclipse of the sun ; or thick, cloudy, foggy weather ; 
or a thunder-storm that shook the earth and rent tfce vail ; and the 
superstitious spectators might have thought that they were hang- 
ing God ; but this story comes either from John, or was among 
the rumors about the affair, and gathered up and given us for 
revelation ; for Matthew, Mark and Luke knew nothing about the 
wonders of the crucifixion. They did not see it ; there was no one 
present but John, and to him Christ commended his mother, (see 
John xix, 26). So these stories are second-hand to Matthew and 
Luke ; and Mark's gospel sums up as follows : Mark says, Peter 
says, John or some one else says. And this is the way we have 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 77 

got our news, and John wrote his work sixty-four years after 
Christ was dead, to convert heretics. Would he not write as 
good a story as he could, consistent with the truth, to say the least ? 
Is it strange that he relates many wonders? When a man strives 
to gain his point, is it not likely that he will tell a good story ? 
Would he not be like men in argument with heretics now a days? 
Do they not tell or bring up the arguments that favor them, and 
leave the remainder in the dark, untold? Would not John, writing 
against heretics, do the same thing ? 

It is hardly necessary to call attention to the circumstances of 
Christ appearing to the disciples after the resurrection. The reader 
will notice by referring to them that as the stories are related they 
hardly knew Christ. Matt, xxviii, 17 : "And when they saw him 
they worshiped him, but some doubted." Mark xvi, 11, 12, 13: 
" And when they had heard that he was alive, and had been seen 
of her, they believed not. After that he appeared in another 
form unto two of them. * * And they went and told it unto 
the residue ; neither believed they them." The chapter goes on 
that Christ said unto them to preach the gospel to every creature, 
and those that believed should take up serpents, drink poisonous 
drink without harm, and speak with new tongues, etc. We know 
that believers cannot do any such thing, and are worshiping the 
same Christ that told them these things. But Mark says : "After 
the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, 
and sat on the right hand of God." This we understand is what 
Peter told Mark, that the Lord was received up and sat at the 
right hand of God. How did Peter know where or which side he 
sat, or whether he sat at all or not ? The poetical, imaginative 
expressions spoil it all, for things that we know Peter or any other 
man knows nothing about are laid down with as much certainty 
as that Christ appeared to them, and more so, for they did express 
grave doubts whether it was Christ or not, and so do we. Luke 
xxiv : " Jesus appeared unto them, and they were terrified and 



78 GIVE US THE TEUTH, 

affrighted, and supposed they had seen a spirit." Christ has to 
argue with them some time to convince them that he is their 
Lord, and tells them that " a spirit has not flesh and bones as ye 
see me have." If everything was Christ that had flesh and 
bones, we have good reason to doubt their seeing him. . But when 
Christ showed them his hands they believed. Does any one sup- 
pose that a mutilated G-od would appear unto men, scaring them 
frightfully ? If Christ raised with his mutilated person as they 
claim, showing that he raised as he was buried, would they not 
have known him — men that had been with him for years ? Could 
they not remember him three or four days without all this ado ? 
He showed them his hands and his feet before they could recog- 
nize him, and only by that. Any other mutilated man, by this 
sign, would have been the resurrected Christ if he had told them 
so. 

The next man that tells us the story is John. He says : " Mary 
Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the 
Lord," (see John xx). John makes no mention but that they 
believed Mary, but Luke, (chap, xxiv, 11), speaking of Mary and 
other women telling them they had seen Christ, says : " And 
their words seemed like idle tales, and they believed them not." 
This would argue that they did not expect Christ would rise. But 
turning to John, he says : "In the evening when the doors were 
shut, "and the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, Jesus 
stood in the midst and showed them his hands and his side ; and 
he breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. But 
Thomas, not being present, declared he did not believe, neither 
would he, unless he should see in his hands the print of the nails, 
and thrust his hand in his side. And after eight days the disciples 
were within, and Thomas with them. Then came Jesus, the doors 
being shut, and stood in the midst. Then saith he to Thomas, 
Reach hither thy finger and behold my hands, and reach hither 
thy hand and thrust it into my side. And Thomas answered and 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 79 

said unto him, My Lord and my God." Here is an entirely differ- 
ent story from what the rest tell. Matthew tells us that some 
doubted, and does not tell us that they saw any signs that caused 
them to believe at any time after. Mark's divine revelation that 
Peter gave him informs us the two disciples would not believe 
Mary Magdalene, and after Christ appeared unto two disciples the 
rest would not believe them ; so Christ appears again unto eleven, 
and upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, 
because they believed not them which had seen him after he was 
arisen. Here is no mention of the Holy Ghost, or the signs that 
they had seen the real Christ, or whether any or all eventually 
believed or not, but Mark insinuates they all believed (notwith- 
standing Matthew said they did not), for they saw him ascend and 
sit at the right hand of God. Mark gives us the most convincing 
revelation we have. If he had waited another generation, and 
got it from Peter's son, he would have established Christ's divinity 
beyond all doubt. Luke tells us nothing about the Holy Ghost, 
but says Christ began at Moses and the prophets to expound unto 
them ; but says nothing about the serpents and poisonous drinks, 
and speaking with new tongues, but he exhibited his feet and 
hands, and was carried up into heaven ; but they did not see him 
take his seat at the right hand of God. And John gives us the 
Thomas story, which is widely different from all the rest — another 
story entirely, and adds another still, that Jesus appeared to them 
at the sea of Tiberias. But here is the old song again. Chap. 
xxi : a Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not that it 
was Jesus. Jesus said, Bring of the fish ye have caught ; and 
they drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty 
and three, and for all there were so many yet was not the net 
broken." It would seem that they were arguing that the stranger 
must be Christ because the net was not broken with so many fishes 
in it. I am something of a fisherman, and I know, so does every 
fisherman, that while the net is pulled carefully in the water if the 



80 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

net is equally strong all over, one fish will break it, or is as liable 
to, as a hundred or two hundred, for only one fish can strike the 
same place ; and a net in water is loose ; a fish striking one spot 
does not make the meshes break any easier at other places where 
other fish are striking. The philosophy of fish in a net is different 
from almost anything else where numbers increase power. But 
this shows us how eager they were to prove the stranger was 
Christ, to resort to such foolish evidences. If they did not bring 
this net story as evidence, why did they mention it ? It is nothing 
very interesting that their fish net did not break ; no one supposed 
it would, if it was worth anything. " Jesus said unto them, 
Come and dine ; and none of the disciples durst ask him, who art 
thou? knowing it was the Lord." "What did they want to a&k 
him for if they knew it was the Lord ? This shows us plainly 
how the thing is : They, knowing that Christ did not rise, dare 
not come out boldly like men and assert it, but insinuate, — tell us 
that some women saw him and they did not believe it, to show us 
they wanted abundance of proof, so if they had seen enough to 
satisfy them, it ought to others ; and after disputing women and 
two disciples, they did see a man that they were well satisfied was 
Christ. But Matthew says: "When they saw him they wor- 
shiped, but some doubted." Why did they doubt — those that 
saw him and worshiped ? If Christ's disciples doubted, that were 
with him and would have known him if they had seen him, that 
is, when Matthew admits so much, I think it is unnecessary to 
argue against them to prove Christ did appear unto them — a tiling 
so unnatural and still a thing they had to sustain to sustain their 
doctrine, and they who had all the evidence there was of a resur- 
rection and then did not believe it, we will abide by it. 

If any one appeared to them, it was a priest, or some one, to 
play that part in the drama, from the following reasons: 1st. 
Notwithstanding he had the marks of crucifixion, showing that he 
arose unchanged, and from his appearance, they did not know him, 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 81 

and Thomas had to tell him by feeling and not by sight — a de- 
ception as easily played as was Jacob's trick to get Esau's bless- 
ing? 2nd. They played blind, denying that Christ had arisen 
and appeared to Mary Magdalene and two of the disciples, when 
they knew he would arise the third day, if they believed 
Christ was God, for he continually told them so ; and if they 
did not believe this part of Christ's teachings, it is evident they 
had but little faith in his being God ; and as his disciples kept 
continually dropping away, it is evident they believed God 
was so veiled in humanity that they could not see him, as theo- 
logians will tell you to-day, if you ask them to explain the 
mystery, why the people who fled to Christ, believing (by the 
extravagant stories that were being rumored by the ignorant) that 
he was God, upon acquaintance with him and being immediately 
with him, learned to their satisfaction that he was not what was re- 
ported, and left him, and declared he was an imposter. They will 
tell you that, or answer you by asking another question, why they 
do not all believe to-day. I ask, if God sent his Son, would he 
not make him visible to every one that beheld him when he was 
sent, that all (not part) of mankind might be saved ? If we 
should see a mountain move from the land into the sea, as a car 
moves on the track, would we not believe there was an almighty 
in it ; but if we record it, do we expect others to believe it that 
had not seen or heard of anything of the kind for nearly two 
thousand years ? And if we record that a mountain moved, but 
that hosts of people hearing that the mountain was moving came 
to the mounlain, tarried with the mountain, and declared that the 
mountain did not move, and we, contrary to the laws of eighteen 
hundred years, still declare the mountain did move, acknowledg- 
ing that hosts examined it and declared it did not, do we expect 
people to believe our story ? It is no argument to appeal to, that 
some will not believe. It is for those that saw the mountain move 
to decide that question ; and when a hundred to one honest men, 



82 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

that had no interest to blot the sun from the heavens that is for 
their benefit, tell us the mountain did not move, how presump- 
tuous for us to argue it did. 

But if Christ's divinity had not been denied by any at his day, 
the evidence that has come to us must establish to any reasonable 
mind that he was no more than man. One such passage as the 
following ought to settle the question. Christ is preaching to the 
Jews his greatness, and says (John viii, 51) : "Verily, verily, I 
say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death." 
Verse 58 : "Verily I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am." 
This is equivalent to acknowledging himself God. Again, verse 
59, " Then took they up stones to cast at him, but Jesus hid him- 
self, and went out of the temple." 

The idea of this being, who claims that he lived before Abra- 
ham, hiding, think of it ! Then think how God done business 
with Moses : slew three thousand in the matter of Baal Peor ; 
swallowed Abiram and his men ; with Joshua he destroyed the 
forces of the five Amorite kings, and slew everything that came 
in his way ; and with Moses he even slew the men that brought 
the evil report from the promised land ; and Moses, when the 
people were about electing a captain to return to Egypt, (Numbers 
xiii and xiv,) says to the people, that " the giants were their 
bread ; God had taken away their defence." By this the people 
were encouraged to fight, but as they had rebelled against Moses, 
he tells them God will not help them (Moses knowing they would 
be whipped), but the people, believing Moses' word as to their 
weakness, make an attack. Verse 45 : " Then the Amale- 
kites came down, and the Canajanites which dwelt in that hill, 
and smote them and discomfited them even unto Hormah." This 
shows us how God renewed the strength of the enemy after they 
were but bread, (taking the Bible story), to whip the children of 
Israel for wanting to return from their miserable starving condition 
to Egypt, where they had plenty, against God's wishes. God is 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 83 

represented as destroying everything ; his anger was kindled against 
his people, and they fell by thousands ; he was wroth and raging 
mad, destroying property and lives through Josiah's reign, and 
rulers that had power to execute. Millions of lives are laid to 
God's charge. 

But how changed this character a few hundreds of years later. 
Why this change ? Had God discovered that he had misruled in 
all time before? If he learned that fact, who informed him? 
Experience ? Does God need that ? , Did the people need killing 
for fearing the giants, and considering themselves to them but 
grasshoppers, and not need it for striking Christ in the face, as 
Luke xxii, 64, informs us ? Here they smite him when he is 
blindfolded, and ask him to tell who done it, but not a word does 
he say. They ask him if he is Christ; he answers, "If I tell 
you, ye will not believe." This shows that he was willing to 
talk, and would tell them if they would believe, but he knew they 
would not believe his bare word, and answered accordingly, and 
Christ says, (next verse), "And if I also ask you, ye will not 
answer me nor let me go." What plainer evidence could we ask 
that Christ wanted to get away, but had no power ? " Then said 
they all, Art thou the Son of God ? And he said unto them, 
Ye say that I am." Why did he not give a direct answer to a 
direct question ? Simply because they were trying to get evi- 
dence against him, and he did not want to give it, hoping to be re- 
leased. " And the people said, What need we further witness ? " 
So they took him to Pilate, who, as is afterward shown, was his 
friend, and declares he could find no cause of death against him, 
and asks Christ, saying, "Art thou the king of the Jews," Luke 
xxiii. Here we learn again, that Christ, not wishing to commit 
himself, says, " Thou sayest it." But in this examination Pilate 
declares in his next words, "I find no fault in this man," show- 
ing that he did not believe Christ guilty of that charge. But 
when Pilate learned he was from Galilee, he sent him to Herod, 



84 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

being under Herod's jurisdiction, Herod being at Jerusalem at 
that time. " And when Herod saw Jesus he was glad, for he was 
desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many 
things about him, and he hoped to have seen some miracle done 
by him. Then he questioned with him in many words, but he 
answered nothing. And the chief priests and scribes stood and 
vehemently accused him, and Herod with his men of war set him 
at naught, and mocked him, and sent him again to Pilate." 

This is plain that Herod was a believer and wished to see his 
power, to see a miracle, and Christ had evidently labored for his 
release, and if not he labored to convince the world he could do 
miracles, and claims he was sent for that purpose, and refers to his 
works to establish his divinity ; and can any one imagine any 
more necessity for an exhibition of his power than on this occa- 
sion, when desired by the rulers of the land that were friendly to 
him, until they became disappointed in his ability? What did he 
want to die for ? He had not established his doctrine. They 
were cuffing and mocking him : why did he not show them by his 
Godlike power that he was Lord of the universe — not talk of his 
greatness as he did when he said if he should ask them they would 
not let him go, " that the Son of Man should sit on the right 
hand of the power of God "? "Why did he not act — not talk? 
Men could talk. Why did he not defend the majesty of God — 
not run and hide ? Could he expect to satisfy the world by talk- 
ing, and when they sought to stone him demonstrate his divinity 
by hiding? Was that evidence of his divinity that he allowed 
himself to be thrust out of the city, and run to prevent their 
pitching him headlong off a hill, as the Bible declares? Does it 
describe a God or a man ? 

There is no use of talking about this matter. Christ lost no 
opportunity that was in his power to establish his divinity ; he 
claims that to be his mission. He " remained dumb like a sheep 
led to the slaughter," only where talk of his great power awed 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 85 

no one ; and power to do a miracle before Herod, who was anxious 
to witness what he had heard, Christ evidently did not possess. This 
is the only reasonable conclusion we can arrive at, when we consider 
the circumstances, the necessity of a demonstration, the desire of 
the rulers that looked upon him favorably from report, and were 
all disappointed and disgusted and lost confidence in him and 
railed at him, leaving an unfavorable opinion that was so easily 
prevented, and a thing really demanded to sustain his divinity ; 
but physical, open tests were out of his power. The great fortress 
of evidence of his divinity is not in his annihilating the worlds 
and creating new ones, but his faith cures like men in every gene- 
ration before and since. 

Christ was not God, neither was he a medium, or machine, be- 
tween God and man. God can deal with us, can talk with us, 
without a machine, half human and half God. If he walked in 
the garden, as Moses declares, and talked with Adam, he could 
with us. But God was never in the garden, walking among the 
brush and fig trees, hunting his two lonely children, and pro- 
nouncing eternal torment to those lonely creatures that had no 
power to withstand his vengeance, and had obeyed the desires of 
the heart he gave them. Would a kind father torment his infant 
child eternally that cried against his orders ? inhuman wretch ! 
Will you charge your God with such ingratitude ? God is not 
against us, but his laws that brought us into being brought all 
things congenial for our happiness. This is not a world of 
trouble, but of pleasure ; we are not the ephemeral creatures or 
play tilings that they tell us God made from a heap of dirt a few 
thousand years ago, and delights to torture if we obey even the 
lawful desires of our heart, but, according to Agassiz, Oken, Lyell, 
Wells, and all eminent geologists of the land, man is the head of 
an almost endless chain of animals that are found fossil deep in the 
rocks, the inhabitants of at least a million of years. The order of 
animals grow higher until m^n is the crowning form of created exist- 



86 GIVE 

ences, and has himself been here at least thirty-five thousand 
years. Let whoever doubts this open a geological work, no matter 
whose. It is becoming, and already is, one of the standard 
branches of study of the day. And if you doubt, they will prove 
it to you, and will not leave a cloud in your mind. I care not 
how well you love the Bible, when truth is demonstrated you must 
believe it. I will give you an extract from a piece I cut from 
the Chicago Weekly, of Sept. 5, 1866: 

"A Human Skull found in Pleiocene Rock. — The State 
Geological Survey of California has recently made a discovery 
that will attract attention all over the world, and that will become 
a notable fact in the history of Geology. Every person of intelli- 
gence is supposed to know that the age of the earth, according to 
the unanimous opinion of geologists, is not less than a million of 
years ; that there have been successive epochs of animal and veg- 
etable life, the remains of which are found deep in the rocks ; 
that the animals and plants of the earlier epochs differ from those 
now living on the earth. A few years since some human bones 
were found in England and Prance, showing that man lived in 
those lands in a former epoch cotemporaneously with the hyena, 
the rhinoceros, the elephant, and numerous other animals which 
disappeared from Europe, long before the beginning of our his- 
torical records. This discovery made a great sensation in the 
learned world, and was the basis of Lyell's great book on " The 
Antiquity of Mankind." The ancient human bones in Europe were 
found in the formation known as the lias, but now a human skull 
has been found in California in the pleiocene, a much older forma- 
tion. This skull is therefore the remnant not only of the earliest 
pioneer of this State, but the oldest known human being. * * * 
We can now say unqualifiedly that man lived in California 
before Shasta and Mount Lassen and the Downieville Buttes 
and the numerous volcanic peaks of the Sierra raised their heads 
to the clouds ; before the era of the glaciers which came after 






THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 87 

the volcanoes and swept down the mountain sides in immense 
rivers of ice ; before the great caverns were worn on the western 
slope of the Sierra Nevada, and when the rivers were still 
running on what are now the tops of the mountains." — Alta 
California. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

LOGICAL QUESTIONS, AND SELF-EVIDENT ANSWERS. 

Do you believe God, the prime mover of all things, was ever 
foiled in his undertaking, outdone by man, or deceived in his plans ? 
If not, then it must have been God's original design to create 
countless millions of human beings, and a devil to make them 
miserable. If the devil is the result of creative power, that is 
by desiring what God brought about and by that means lost his 
state of holiness, then it is by God's means he became a devil. 
If the devil is a spirit, capable of entering and tearing human 
beings, and had not his origin with God, then he is from everlast- 
ing, coeval with God. If evil or the devil is eternal, or coe- 
val with good or God, then change the Bible to read, In the 
beginning was God, and his antagonist the devil. It matters not 
which horn of the dilemma we take, whether the devil is eternal, 
or God made him, we cannot escape one or the other; they are 
both engaged in the same business, catching men, and the devil is 
the acknowledged victor. This is what the Christian problem, 
when solved, runs us into, and we cannot escape it. 

Would it be more absurd to suppose a man would transform 
himself into an ass, than to suppose a holy angel would meta- 
morphose himself into a devil ? 

Is it not as reasonable to suppose a benevolent father would 



88 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

drive a mad dog among his children, as to believe God would 
drive a devil that tried to dethrone him among his ? 

"Would God create, damn, and then save ? What fun would 
this be for God? But John tells us that Christ "came to his 
own and his own received him not." The Jews rejected the 
Christian doctrine, and crucified its author ; and we will settle this 
right here, God was foiled in his attempt, deceived in his plans, 
outdone, and defied by man, or there was no God in Christ or his 
teachings. 



CHAPTER XV. 

MYSTERIOUS AGENTS. 

Holy Ghost, what is it? Acts ii: "And when the day of Pen- 
tecost was fully come, they were of one accord in onn place. 
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a mighty 
rushing wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. 
And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, 
and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the 
Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues." We will 
bear in mind that this story is what Luke says the visionary Peter 
says, (as Luke wrote the Acts). The spectators, looking at the 
scene, say, " These men are filled with new wine." This is the way 
the men appeared to outsiders, but Peter rose up and said : " These 
men are not drunk as ye suppose. But this is what was spoken 
by the prophet Joel. And it shall come to pass in the last 
days I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh," [not those few at 
Pentecost], " and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, 
and your old men shall dream dreams. And on my servants 
and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 89 

Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in 
heaven above and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and 
vapor of smoke ; the sun shall be turned into blood before the 
grea| and notable day of the Lord come." This is what igno- 
rant Peter — (I say ignorant because (Acts iii, 13) Luke tells us, 
speaking of Peter and John, that '"the people perceived they 
were unlearned and ignorant men") — this is what Peter sup- 
posed the phenomena was, to fulfill Joel's prediction. Does 
Joel describe such a scene as this? Joel says the Spirit should 
be poured out upon all flesh, but those few at Pentecost were not 
all flesh, they saw no visions or dreams, they saw no dark sun or 
pillars of fire, they saw no wonders in the heavens or earth, they 
saw nothing that Joel describes, but acted like drunken men and 
Peter did not deny it, but said they were not drunk as ye suppose, 
being only the third hour of the day ; as much as to say, if it 
had been later in the day they might have reason to think they 
were drunk; but we do not suppose they were drunk, but what 
was it ? "We will see if Rev. John Wesley knows anything about 
it. See Abel Stevens' History of Wesley, page 62. Speaking 
of mysterious phenomena, he says, giving Wesley's words, 
11 They began usually with a loud whistling of the wind around 
the house ; before it came into the room the latches were lifted 
up and the windows and doors would rattle, the sound often seemed 
in the air, the mastiff would bark violently, sometimes moans 
were heard as of a person dying," etc. Here is a mystery Wesley 
and others witnessed at different times, and usually commenced 
with a whistling of the wind around the house. It is not my 
purpose to explain these mysteries, as he, although believing it to be 
of divine origin, never claimed it to be the Holy Ghost, but an 
independent agent not commissioned by God, but superhuman. 
It would sometimes push them and throw things about the house, 
but harmed no one. 

In this scene, we find the Pentecost gale, and sounds inside when 



90 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

the visitor arrived. Now, if we look to the Salem witchcraft in 
the early settlement of the colonies, Ave have the remainder here. 
They supposed it was witches, and they were accused of bewitch- 
ing others, until the excitement arose to such a degree that twenty 
people were executed and four hundred imprisoned, and the excite- 
ment increased until they abolished the law of executing in such 
cases, and emptied the prisons, and it lulled awa} r ; but in some 
cases they would be seized in churches, and one person seized an 
umbrella and jumped astride and hopped down the aisle, to the 
great merriment of some, and wonder of others. Others were 
seized with the mania and would hop around the floor ; and in one 
instance at an out-door meeting, they would climb trees, and pray, 
and some would run on all-fours and bark like a dog, and all man- 
ner of such antics, some being very serious and shouting and 
prophesying, similar to Cartwright's subjects that we mentioned in 
our seventh chapter. 

Mysterious phenomena have been common in all time. Deut. 
xviii : Moses says, " There shall not be found among you any one 
that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through fire, or that 
useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a 
witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a 
wizard, or a necromancer, for all these things are an abomination 
unto the Lord." Here Moses goes over the whole field, and he 
infers that they could go through fire in those days. That out- 
strips the Pentecost wonders or any since. But who thought that 
in this great variety of mysteries it was the Holy Ghost, before 
ignorant Peter and others who were inferior to Moses in judgment 
received it as a blessing from Christ, instead of an abomination to 
the Lord, as Moses declares? But Moses says, (Deut. xiii) : "If 
there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and 
giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder come to pass, 
thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet." This would 
cut off Daniel and Peter too, as an abomination unto the Lord, for 






THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 91 

they are both visionary dreamers. Here Moses warns his people not 
to believe them if they recommend the worship of other gods, not- 
withstanding they gave a sign or wonder and it came to pass. 
Moses knew that all these visions and dreams were a humbug; he 
was shrewd, or he never could have accomplished wh#t he did ; he 
had no confidence in these mysterious agents. There is nothing su- 
perhuman, no Spirit or Holy Ghost but man's own about it. Man 
may be in a condition to dream, a condition to see visions, a condition 
to prophesy as the result of his vision ; he may be in a condition to 
see spirits and hear them talk, hear wind and other sounds about 
the house when really there are none. By the power of electricity, 
at the command of the will, we move our person and whatever we 
wish ; the power of the will raises the chair, and our arm is the 
instrument the will uses to do it with. "We may be in a condition 
that the electric forces of the body are the instruments that move 
bodies. 

But again we ask, what does Peter mean by the Holy Ghost ? 
(Acts x, 44-46 : "While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy 
Ghost fell on all those which heard the word, for they heard them 
speak with tongues and magnify (enlarge) God." This is Peter's 
sign then that when they have the Holy Ghost he knows it, 
11 For they magnify God." Now look at this figure and see what a 
small pivot the Third Person in the Trinity — the miraculous wonder 
of the whole book — the Holy Ghost — yes, the great thing that the 
apostles waited for with anxiety to assist them to work wonders — 
rests upon. Yes, when Peter preached to Cornelius, a gentile, 
and his house that had not heard the gospel, and they were or 
Cornelius was a devout, pious man, and Peter preached a storm, (as 
he always did either preach or deny Christ with zeal), they became 
excited at the chain of wonderful things he said, and they might 
have run wild with excitement as we see at any revival or camp 
meeting — probably they did, and shouted and praised God with 
new tongues, with such voices as they never did before, and really 



92 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

fancied themselves entering the realms of heavenly bliss. Expe- 
rience has taught us that many minds in unison is an awful power. 
When heated and overheated, whether in worship or in anger, 
every additional mind in unison adds fuel to the blaze ; while one 
opposite mind may destroy a spiritual circle, where otherwise their 
combined power might have shaken the walls of the house. The 
power of a hundred overheated minds, or what is the same in 
effect, sitting in a circle or passive state, with united hands, all 
believing in a great demonstration of spirits — power of God, or 
firmly believing their own abilities to accomplish wonders, with 
enchanting music to aid the transition, may be able to enter the 
electro -psychological state, or a part of them, and see wonders, 
talk wonders, believe wonders, and the combined mesmeric forces 
of the circle may move tables, produce sounds, jar dishes, open 
doors, and astonish the multitude, and no Holy or unholy Ghost 
about it. Professor Dodds tell us, that "two men with united 
hands under the third man's shoulders and hips, by moderate long 
lifting, will give off to him sufficient electrical force to raise fifty 
pounds of his weight, or make him fifty pounds lighter." You 
may also enter a room where a person is sleeping, still as you 
please, fix your eyes and mind upon him, and in a few moments 
he will awake. We see nothing in Peter's ghost stories super- 
natural, and will pass to notice what Joel means by the notable 
day of the Lord. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

We will now try to learn what Joel means by the words 
recorded in the book bearing his name, second chapter, where he 
says: " The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall 
tremble ; the sun and moon shall be dark, and the stars shall 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 93 

withdraw their shining. * * * And I will show wonders in 
the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. 
The snn shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, 
before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come." These 
are the most sublime words in the whole book. The same senti- 
ment of a notable day is described by Isaiah, thirteenth chapter, 
in a similar strain nearly equal to this. Psalms xviii reads: 
"Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the 
hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. There went 
up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured : 
coals were kindled by it." The reader will notice that in the last 
quotation from Psalms, David speaks in the past tense, describing 
a similar day to the one Joel expects to come. It has been a 
common error with theologians, not understanding the nature of 
the day referred to, to torture all tenses into the future. Usually 
when the Bible writers, like all other men, tell us by using the 
past tense that the event is past, they mean what they say. 

Let us see if we can find any days corresponding with these 
notable days. As long ago as the da,js of Ovid (Book XV) he 
tells us he had seen land formed at the expense of the sea, and 
marine shells lying dead far from the ocean ; and, more than that, 
" an ancient anchor had been found on the very summit of a 
mountain." The great Saharan desert is covered with marine 
shells, proving that it has heaved from the ocean's bottom. In 
Eastern England is the delta of a once far flowing river that ran 
over regions now lying at the bottom of the Atlantic. The 
crust of this earth, although growing thicker, is estimated to be 
only as the thickness of thirty wafers overlapping each other, on a 
twelve inch globe, or the shell of an egg to its interior, — the earth's 
crust being only thirty miles thick, while it is four thousand 
miles to its centre. Here we stay floating on a fabric that 
might by the least convulsion, from whatever cause, engulf us be- 
neath the ruins of eternal chads. There are known causes that 



94 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

produce these notable days. We have had many such days as 
they refer to. 

It is a known fact to all astronomers, that the earth's parallelism 
is slowly, very slowly, destroyed by a movement which Arago 
compares to the inclined turning of a top. This movement has 
the effect of making the equinoctial points on the surface of the 
globe retrograde toward the east from year to year, in such a man- 
ner that at the end of 25,800 years by some astronomers, but 
21,000 by Adhemar, the equinoctial point has literally made a 
tour of the globe and has returned to the same position which it 
occupied at the beginning of this immense period, which is called 
the great year. It is this motion in which the terrestrial axis 
describes around its own centre that revolution round a double 
conic surface, which is known as the procession of the equinoxes. 
It was observed 2,000 years ago by Hipparchus. Its cause was 
discovered by Newton, and its complete revolution explained by 
D'Alembert and Laplace. According to M. Adhemar, " in the 
year 1248 before the Christian era, the north pole attained its 
maximum summer duration ; since then, for the last 3,1 1 2 years, it 
has been decreasing, and this will continue till the year 7388 of 
our era, before it attains its maximum winter duration." The 
reader will understand that the winters of the northern hemisphere 
will grow longer every year and the summers shorter, of course, 
for the next 5522 years, when the northern hemisphere will be an 
iceberg. These are known facts, that are as certain as the return- 
ing of comets, that astronomers tell us will come in so many 
hundred or thousand years, and they come. 

The glacial epoch has moved rock of several hundred tons 
weight hundreds of miles, that swept down and cleared off the sides 
of mountains. Every person that has heard of geology is supposed 
to know that different portions of our globe at different times have 
been covered with glaziers. The northern and central parts of Eu- 
rope seem of a sudden to have been seized with the temperature 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 95 

of the glacial regions, and the great meadows where the elephant, 
active horses, great hippopotamus, and carnassiers roamed and 
grazed, were comparatively on a sudden covered with a mantle of 
ice, and only the bones left to tell the tale of the sudden annihila- 
tion of their race. 

As the summers grow shorter in the north the. fall of snow 
in winter is only settled by at last snow and rain in summer, and 
the immense body congeals and condenses by its own weight, until 
it becomes a solid block of ice ; the rivers are frozen up, and nothing 
is heard but the cold winter's blast, until a voluminous crust 
is formed at the pole heavy enough to modify the spheroidal form 
of the earth. This, as a necessary consequence, changes the centre 
of gravity, the icebergs now melting as the summers are longest 
in the southern hemisphere, freely flow northward to restore the 
equilibrium and preserve the spheroidal form of the earth. As 
the waters leave the southern hemisphere in a measure, new 
continents appear, deluging the northern parts of the earth, sweep- 
ing man and animals from the face of the globe. As the earth is 
swaying, the molten mass, wishing to have a voice in the play, 
heaves up continents, deluges continents ; he opens his awful 
mouth, and sounds his trump, shows the pillars of fire in the 
earth, hot vapor and steam from his awful geysers spout to the 
heavens showers of water. Fire, brimstone, and pillars of fire 
and smoke, as Joel says, are seen in the earth. The clouds of 
smoke darken the sun, and through smoke the moon looks like 
blood. God shakes the earth and the heavens fairly tremble, and 
from the darkness of smoke the stars withdraw their shining, 
mountains heave up from the surging gulf and look to the heavens, 
as on a small scale we beheld in Mexico, 28th of September, 
1759. Earthquakes shook the earth for two months unceas- 
ingly, to give them warning (as it did Lot when the angels advised 
him to leave) ; then the earth began to rise until it reached the 
height of 500 feet; the earth undulated like the waves of the 



96 GIVE US THE TEUTH, 

sea in a tempest ; thouands of small hills arose and disappeared 
in turn ; and finally an immense gulf opened, from which fire, red- 
hot stones and ashes were violently discharged and darted to 
prodigious heights. Six mountains surged up from the raging 
gulf, among which the volcanic mountain of Jorullo, 2150 feet 
above the ancient plane. When the earth began to rise, the two 
rivers, Cuitimbo and San Pedro, flowed back, inundating all the 
plain now occupied by Jorullo, but in the upheaving region, 
while it continued to rise, a gulf opened and swallowed the 
rivers.* 

Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stadia witnessed on a small scale 
one of these notable days of the Lord. "Whoever escaped the 
chaotic tomb could tell us something of the pillar of fire in the 
earth. They witnessed the wrath not of God, but of the earth's 
terrible blast. The people of those cities when they saw them- 
selves being buried from Vesuvius' top, felt that the day of the 
Lord was at hand, as Isaiah describes : " Their hearts melted, and 
all hands were faint, for the day of the Lord is at hand. And 
they shall be afraid, pangs of sorrow shall take hold of them." 
Isaiah had heard of such days from the deepest antiquity, so had 
Joel; and Abraham witnessed one of those days, or a miniature of 
one, when he arose early in the morning and "looked toward Sod- 
om and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain, and 
beheld, and lo the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of 
a furnace." Here the earth opened and vomited its molten con- 
tents into the heavens, falling in fire, ashes and red-hot stones, 
burning the cities thereabouts ; and finally it collapsed, and sank, 
forming what is now the Dead Sea ; but of course in that super- 
stitious age it was God's judgments for sin. 

There is a sufficient amount of evidence to satisfy geologists, of 
several deluges of modern date, geologically speaking. One 
occurred in the north of Europe, produced by the upheaval of the 

* See Lous Figuire on deluges, in his History of the World before the Deluges. 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 97 

mountains of Norway. Commencing in Scandinavia, the wave 
spread, and carried its ravages into those regions which constitute 
Sweden, Norway, European Russia, and the north of Germany, 
sweeping before it all the loose soil on the surface, and covering 
the whole of Scandinavia and all the plains of northern Europe. 
The physical proofs of this deluge of the north exist in the mantle 
of unstratified earth which covers all the plains and depressions 
of northern Europe, with the attendant phenomena of striated and 
dome-shaped rocks, and far transported erratic blocks, which be- 
come more characteristic as we ascend to higher latitudes, as in 
Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The southern borders of the 
Baltic are covered with marine fossil shells ; and abundance of 
evidence that our space will not allow. 

The second European deluge is supposed to have been the 
result of the formation and upheaval of the Alps, which has filled 
with debris and movable soil all the valleys of France, Germany 
and Italy, in a circumference which has the Alps for its centre. 

The proofs of a great convulsion at a recent geological period 
are numerous, covering pages in geological works. Says Mr. Fi- 
guire : " The Asiatic deluge, of which sacred history has trans- 
mitted to us a few particulars, we know was the result of the up- 
heaval of a part of the long chain of mountains which diverge 
from the Caucassus. The earth opening by one of these fissures 
left in its crust in course of cooling, an eruption of volcanic mat- 
ter escaped through the crater. Masses of watery vapor or steam 
accompanied the lava discharged from the interior of the globe, 
which being dissipated in clouds, and condensing, descended in tor- 
rents of rain, and the plains were drowned under the volcanic 
mud." This same great author goes on to prove that we had this 
deluge, by quoting from Berosus and the sacred books of Hindus 
and the Ghebres, all mentioning this event near the time men- 
tioned in Genesis. He also gives the geological evidences the 
same as in the other deluges, and says the deluge was local, and 



98 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

quotes Mariel de Serres, and others, who say the words " all the 
earth " are translated from the Hebrew word haarets, which does 
not always mean all the earth, but is used in the sense of region 
or country, and Moses used it to represent the peopled portion 
within his knowledge. 

These were the notable days of the Lord that our fathers re- 
ferred to ; they had not forgotten these days. They were more 
frequent when the crust of the earth was thinner. In early days 
they had traditions of these events ; they feared them — the shock 
and destruction of continents of people ; and as muttering and 
thundering are the monitors to warn them of danger, as observa- 
tion teaches us before volcanic eruptions in our day, they were no 
doubt warned before a great catastrophe, as with Noah, many 
years beforehand, and he *made an ark and warned the people to 
prepare ; but they had not his head of philosophy, they did not 
believe any danger in their day ; but as the signs grew louder and 
more frequent, Noah prepared for safety (although the story of his 
saving all the species of animals was no doubt conjectured from 
the fact they supposed the deluge was universal), he and his fam- 
ily entered the ship. These great events are not of a sudden ; the 
greater the catastrophe the longer it is accumulating. This is a 
law of nature, applied to man as well as the earth. As I said 
before, geologists prove the deluge of Moses by evidence from the 
earth's appearance in that country, the same as the other great 
cateclysms of nature. They show us that great convulsions of 
nature put an end to the trilobites in the Silurian period, the great 
reptiles of the Lias, the mastodons of the Tertiary, the megathe- 
riums of the Quaternay epoch, and numerous floods and great and 
notable days of the Lord occurred that our reverend ancestors de- 
scribe ; while the pious believer in the divinity of his book, like a 
hermit in the mountain, has only heard of one great rainstorm, and 
Noah's floating in a great ark, and a great day a-coming when 
men's decayed bodies will be restored and animated. With these 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 99 

seeds of ignorance they are content. The sun shines and the 
moon quarters, is the extent of their inquiry of astronomical sci- 
ence, hardly conscious that the earth travels through space over 
eleven hundred miles per minute in its yearly motion, and the 
surface sixteen miles per minute in its diurnal. It is not a sloth 
creeping through space, liable to turn back at the will of man, as 
in the case related of its turninsr back in Ahaz' dial. 

o 

Let me say to you, reader, look ahead. God is leading us on- 
ward. Do not turn to dark ages of deep antiquity for knowledge 
of God. Learn his laws, and you can do wonders. We have 
men that do, and they already command the lightning, the power 
that moves the worlds and sustains the universe, to be our ser- 
vants, and with the lightning's speed this power tells us, and the 
Ocean is no barrier, the news from continent to continent ; the 
tide of markets is influenced from hour to hour; daily news from 
all parts of the globe lies on our desks, so closely does this al- 
mighty power yield obeisance to man. By the revelation of 
nature wonders in the heavens are revealed, miracles from the 
powers of the heavens and the earth are being performed ; the 
mysteries of the formation of the globe are fast being solved ; the 
nature and movements of the heavenly bodies are being under- 
stood ; the laws of God are found to be immutable and never 
change, by thousands of years experience. 

To understand the Almighty is to study his laws. They are 
divine, and from eternity; they are the roads leading to him. 
Eternity, what is eternity ? It is space. What is space ? It is 
an eternity of asriform, gaseous, invisible matter pervading all 
space. What pervades this matter? Power. What power? 
Attraction. Adhesion, cohesion, caloric, and so on, are dialects 
of this power. What does attraction do? Gathers particles and 
produces circular motion, as water running through an aperture in 
a vessel. What is produced?* Caloric is emitted by the conden- 
sation and friction, emitting its latent heat. This process con- 



100 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

tinues until millions of extent are accumulated, and a sun or world 
is formed in chaotic state. Friction and condensation, as I 
stated, produce great heat, and the greater the accumulation 
the greater the central attraction, the greater the condensation, 
and the greater the heat, and an uncontrolable mass of surging 
lava is the result. When its motion becomes of sufficient velocity 
to prevent any farther accumulation, that is, when the centripetal 
and centrifugal forces are exactly equal, condensation and cooling 
commences ; thousands, perhaps millions, of years roll away, and 
the globe begins to crust. Then, the same laws that produced the 
world, in process of time produce plants. 

Growth is one of the elements of matter. See "Wood's Bot- 
any. Every man is supposed to know that barren earth from any 
depth in the ground, brought to the surface, will not lie many 
years without growing to grass and weeds, without sowing. Every 
one that has cleared new land and burned it over, and left it a 
few months, can tell you about the growth of weeds that are not 
in the surrounding woods or country. The alpine snows, the 
burning sands, the ocean's bottom, and hot boiling springs, all 
have their plants. 

Growth is natural and progressive. Blot from earth all vege- 
table existences, and thousands of years would elapse before we 
would have the present variety of forests, first weeds, plants and 
shrubs, still upward to the towering oak, and the lofty pine. 
From the fact that as a rule they bear seed that produces their 
kind, we are not to infer that they never grew without that seed, 
or a providential creation. What is the seed ? It is a composi- 
tion of a certain number of the elements of the earth in certain 
proportions, and when that seed is in the ground it has an affinity 
for the elements congenial to its nature, and assumes form, which 
we term growth ; and the seed contains on a minute scale the 
elements that compose the tree, and when those elements come in 
contact, whether in the seed or not, when there is a union of the 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 101 

same elements that the seed contains, growth without the seed is 
the result. But these events are not as common as the growth of 
grass and weeds. Following the rule of nature previously stated, 
great events require time. Elephants are not as common as grass- 
hoppers. 

Animal life follows the rule of vegetable. The egg of a hen or 
a bird is composed of the elements of the earth in certain propor- 
tions ; and with nothing but the application of caloric, those same 
elements assume the shape that a combination of elements in those 
proportions by the application of caloric must assume. The thing 
is forced just as much as the earth is forced around its centre of 
gravity by its own laws common to its properties. But we do not 
mean to be understood that a hen was first formed by a union of 
the elements that are found in an egg, but a low order of growth, 
both vegetable and animal, are common to the earth, and the 
march is not downward but upward. The oak is not the result, 
however, of a cabbage plant, but of its own species on a small 
scale, first shrubs of the oak species, then onward. The seed 
from a potatoe ball hardly produces potatoes the first year; they 
are extremely small and not the kind after the seed. The next 
year they are larger, and so on to their standard. So we find an- 
imals of the different classes beginning at or near nothing, and 
reaching a standard of perfection of their kind. These are facts 
that no informed man denies. 

The fossils found deep in the rocks tell no tales. The growth 
from the firat palenzoic fishes to man has been steadily upward, 
until man is the crowning form of created existences, and is at the 
end cf an endless — so to speak — chain of animal life. 

Some geologists feel some delicacy in acknowledging animals 
the ancestors of man, and still acknowledge that for a million of 
years the great archetype has been preparing by a continued 
higher order for man, from the first molusks of the Silurian period. 
But the fact must be acknowledged, that man came, like every- 



102 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

thing else, from a lower order to be king of the land— sum total of 
the animal race. 

The christian says, "We did not come from an animal, a chip- 
muck, or a flea ; we have a God in our creation." Yes, you have 
a God in your creation, that made man out of dirt, with as small 
commencement as we claim, and he created animals at the same 
time six thousand years ago, and we know that animals have been 
here hundreds of thousands of years, and man, geologically 
speaking, but of yesterday, and that not less than thirty-five 
thousand years ago. These facts we know, and are as certain of 
it as you are that the sun shines; besides, we never came from 
any such source as that ; we came in the middle of the current 
through the highest, not the lowest, order of animals. 

Nature readily produces invisible and visible animal or nervous 
life. Who supposes the millions of small animals that we find in a 
tub of rain water that fell a short time previous pure from the hea- 
vens, had any ancestors ? No, sir, the swarms of lice, insects and pests 
of many kinds that infest portions of the globe, are no'; created, 
or never was, but breed from the union of certain elements, 
when the weather is favorable, the result being life. What did 
God create them for? Answer the question. They are the result 
of law common with matter. Because. some of the pests breed from 
eggs, it is no evidence that others do not without. But all living 
things that do not breed of themselves common with the elements, 
are derived from something lower that did. The order runs higher 
and higher, huge reptiles in the Olitic system, but man came not 
from them. We travel up to the Tertiary epoch. We find higher 
order and a great variety of animals, but nothing at the lower 
stratas, Miocene and Eocene periods, that looks like man ; but in 
the Post Pleocene there is. We find the man among the mammals ; 
we find animals that resemble him. The wild Australian children 
of late in their line are the wonder of the world. They resemble 
animals, but more strongly the human species. The savage of 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 103 

Aveyronin 1800 found in a wild state, could not talk, and had no 
intelligence, but showed signs of contemplation. The Parisian 
savans disputed whether he was an ape or a wild man, but the 
learned Dr. Isard pronounced him a man. " No ape," he says, 
" ever exhibited such signs of intelligence — such dreamy mani- 
festations — vague conceptions of the ideal." But we find man 
with all shades down to the highest animal, and we must abide 
the facts. He is traced to the animals, and the animals to him. 
Here we are masters of the field, kings of the earth, too proud to 
acknowledge our true origin. 

The creative power, whatever it is, that called the world into 
being, called man. Remember this maxim : a law cannot sustain 
what it does not create. The law that sustains us must be the law 
that creates us, to be in harmony with that law. But is this all ? 
Age comes on ; formation is a sure sign of destruction or decay. 
The king monarch of earth, like the animals, is bound to decay. 
The proud spirit of the noblest work of nature yields to the 
monarch of time. Insects are born in the morning and live their 
time and die at night. Some animals are born at new year, and 
live their days by the next. Man is longer gaining the meridian 
of life, his days are threescore and ten. 

It is a universal law. Growth denotes decay. The towering 
oak, like the king of earth, droops at the bidding of time. That 
which is quickly formed, is quickly destroyed ; slow in formation, 
slow in destruction. And the law is as certain as the sun shines, 
that formation denotes destruction. If it were not so, there would 
be no change, but a fixed monotony of eternal sameness without 
evidence of change and without evidence of formation ; but this is 
not the case. We know it formed, and formation denotes activity 
of matter, and as the law of matter is the soul of matter and never 
changes, formation continues. Birth and meridian of our globe 
point to its end and its destruction, is but the continued process of 
formation of one picture into another. 



104 GIVE US THE TKUTH, 

Like all things of nature this and other worlds will return to 
the elements whence they came ; as the blood in the heart is thrown 
to all parts of the system, to be returned as before, so new worlds 
are formed, unceasing, unremitting, ever changing. Its permuta- 
tion inexhaustible, — its variety of scene infinite, and this is 
eternity. It never began and will never end. This is the revealed 
God and the only one revealed to man, and the nature of this G-od 
we understand. But the idea of an intelligent mind or being that 
directs and organizes matter and fills eternity, is perfectly incom- 
prehensible, consequently only an extravagant theory that bewil- 
ders the mind, and has always been a damp to the progress of 
science. Matter itself contains all the elements to produce the 
phenomena we behold. Matter exists, and must act, and when 
the present picture is defaced, some other is the inevitable result. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

CONCLUSION. 

As we have given you an idea of our origin, it is our duty to 
give you an idea of our destiny. With the greatest enthusiasm 
have you grasped the idea, and it is a consoling one, that man is 
not all man, but when the man is through with the scenes of this 
life, "still onward, still upward, still brighter is that light when un- 
sheathed from its mortal coil, its progress never ceasing, its course 
untrammeled, its capacity for enjoyment ever increasing and never 
ending ; disembodied spirits, angels, then archangels, still onward, 
no one knows its end. This is a beautiful theory and we all wish 
it a reality, but such is not the case, and we must abide by the facts. 
But these ideas arose from the perversion of one of our natural fac- 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 105 

ulties, the organ of vitativeness, given us for self-preservation. It 
is an indispensable element in all animals for the same purpose. 
And with a strong desire to live here we know no ending, and 
predict an eternity of life as the result ; but with the old person 
that falls like the leaf of a tree, when he has lived the fullness of 
his days he desires to die, he has seen enough of life, the organ of 
vitativeness has faded with his other faculties, and to die is pleasure. 
His desire for eternal life is weak, it fades as does his desire to live 
here, proving that his eternal air castle was founded upon the 
activity of that organ. This is invariably the case, making proper 
allowance for his training that may excite his mind, or somewhat 
modify his natural mind in his last moments upon this point. 
And the faculty of our mind that engenders filial love to our 
species, that prevents continual destruction and extermination of 
our race, that begets love for love, favor for favor — this faculty, I 
say, when through ignorance we suppose a heavenly parent to 
exist, that bestows upon us blessing and kindness with an unsparing 
hand, and hears our petitions, and has compassion upon our sor- 
rows, and supplies our wants, placing God to us as a generous man 
'to a suffering beggar ; imagining a similar God to this, is why we 
worship him. Being as we suppose our greatest benefactor we 
worship him with the greatest zeal from our natural faculties, ven- 
eration, hope, ideality and wonder. But in modern ages we have 
learned that matter exists, and with matter laws, and are insepara- 
bly connected. 

Law is matter, and matter is law. Strip matter of its laws of 
affinity and it is dissolved into the invisible, and its presence un- 
known. Sir Isaac Newton conjectures that this earth could not 
exceed one cubic inch of poreless matter. The earth is not so 
much matter, as many suppose, with a few laws from an over- 
ruling mind that directs it, sending rain on the just and unjust 
alike, because it is his pleasure so to do ; but law is the principal 
element, life, soul and stimulant of the globe and universe. It is 



106 

law that produces these phenomena— no will about it. It knows 
no difference between the righteous and wicked, but does its work 
impartially. If this law is God, or an influence from God, then 
God is law and law is God, or, in other words, God is the universe 
and the universe is God ; for to suppose a being that has some 
incomprehensible power of acting independently, as we behold the 
manifestations in what we term laws, and that manifestation 
not the being himself but an emanation from him, leads us into 
an incomprehensible theory, an uncalled-for supposition, and leads 
us to exclaim, Great is the mystery of Godliness, all from merely 
a supposition of an impossibility that makes it a mystery ; but 
such is not the fact. 

There is no mystery that we have to deal with. God is not the 
universe, nor the universe God. God is not the law that governs 
matter, nor the law God, or an incomprehensible emanation from 
him. We have no information concerning the origin of matter 
and its inseparable laws that fill eternal space with worlds ; when 
we do, then is time to consider its author ; but we are satisfied that 
matter is eternal, and if matter is eternal, as we have before indicated, 
its laws must be. "We know by a union of certain elements a great 
additional degree of cold is produced, as snow and common salt ; 
other elements, as quicklime and water, caloric is emitted ; two col- 
ored fluids produce a colorless one ; two colorless fluids a colored 
one ; central attraction must produce a spheroidal form ; friction, 
by interchange of particles, whether by condensation of solids 
or friction of particles, produces heat ; and so on, almost to in- 
finity — we term laws of matter and the laws may be said to be 
the thing itself. The only difference between law and matter, is 
bulk, laws make it bulk. A certain degree of heat destroys 
matter as a bulk, and it becomes as the invisible gases, its laws 
in effect destroyed with it, neither having a perceptible existence. 
And so with the globe. Give it a certain degree of rarefaction 
and its existence as matter, or its laws, are not known. Why ? 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 107 

Because it follows an inevitable rule of law, that there can be 
no increase or diminution of power ; and when the same bulk 
occupies more space, its power at an}- given point is in proportion 
diminished ; and the process continuing, the power at any one 
point becomes insensible and the matter invisible to such a degree 
that we say space is void, and yet there is a universe in it ; and 
it is only by concentration that we are able to discover matter, and 
with it laws become perceptible. 

This is the only God and eternity we have any knowledge of, 
and we are subject to that course of matter. There is not, 
neither can there be, anything produced from matter that can or 
will exist independent of matter. Hence, intelligence, whether in 
an ant or a man, being the result of matter, manifests itself through 
a certain organization of matter, and is the law of a certain 
mechanism of matter manifested in what we term instinct, thought, 
spirit, soul, intelligence, or whatever you please to denominate it, 
and is as matter eternal, and is a law of the elements, and its 
manifestation will cease or lose its identity when its mechanism 
does. 

Man is not half temporal and half eternal, temporal body and 
eternal soul ; the two natures are not compatible. He is all 
eternal. There is the same eternity of one as the other, and 
they are inseparable. Intelligence implies nervous life, and the 
result of nervous life is a manifestation of intelligence in some 
degree, and is the inevitable result of matter that by its inherent 
elements or laws of growth assumes that form. "We are not 
part God inherent from birth, nor a part of him received at any 
subsequent time. These are but extravagant theories, invented 
to supply the want of knowledge upon that point. 

"We are after facts that can be demonstrated, believing no 
miracle or mystery. There is none, when the truth is understood 
that is within our reach. As Solomon says, " There is nothing 
new under the sun," although there has been an increase, for a few 



108 GIVE US THE TRUTH, 

hundred thousand years, of intelligence in the animal race from the 
lowest to man, and may continue until the decline of this globe ; 
but like the globe its meridian and retrograde will be attained. 

To suppose continued expansion of the human soul throughout 
eternity, is to suppose another impossibility ; it must bring up 
somewhere, or space with' any bounds, no matter how large, could 
not eventually contain one soul. This like many others is but an 
extravagant popular theory, without any foundation in fact. And 
to suppose that nothing of interest existed previous to a few 
thousand years ago, is equivalent to supposing that nothing will 
in a few thousand years hence. The past is the only record of 
the future. 

But laying aside suppositions and dwelling upon facts. Eter- 
nity never began ; eternity will never end. Eternity never 
changed; eternity never will. Though worlds are born, live and 
die, eternity never changes. Though suns and universes that we 
now behold in shining splendor fade and are no more, the matter 
and laws still unchanged continue to exist. New worlds, new 
systems, new orders of life congenial to the climate and state of 
the elements, under the different forms of their exhaustless per- 
mutation, is the inevitable result, but eternity never changes. 



THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL. 109 



O'er the silvery waters of Lake G-eorge 

In boyhood I did roam, 
Where naught was seen but the mountains' gorge 

And the wild sea's raging foam. 

Where hugh cliffs and tall mountains 

Looked down upon the storm, 
In the frail skiff beneath their base 

I trembled at their form. 

Unconscious then was I 

That these huge mountain beds 
Teemed with fossil animals, 

From their base unto their heads. 

weak and timid mortal, 

Why was it I should fear, 
They are but the annals 

Of many a million year. 

Unfold their leaves, and marvels read, 

tfhen look up to the skies, 
And exclaim, in language plain, 

Human theories are but lies. 

Our bones are but atoms 

That enlarge the heap, 
And in their wild bosom 

All humanity must sleep. 

There is but one power, 

To which potentates must nod, 
That power is nature : 

And nature is our G-od. 



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THE 





LIGHT OF THE AGE: 



OR 



MIRACLES EXPLAINED 



By FRANKLIN B. OROUTT. 



CHICAGO: 

PRINTED IFOR THE AUTHOR. 
1866. 



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